[aprssig] Symbols for traffic alerts

[Morten Johansen]

Hi, list!

I've been following the list for a while, but this is my first post. I hope this is the right place to post this question.

The Norwegian Road Authorities are kind enough to post traffic alerts in XML format including geographic position, urgency information and other "snacks".
For some months now I've run an experiment that analyzes these alerts for my area and injects them into the APRS-IS as objects.

There has been lots of feedback, and all interested parties (including NRRL) have been rounded up in a mailing list to try to outline a permanent service.

Alerts have a "type", of which the most common are: "closed road", "temporarily closed road" or "reduced navigability road". It basically describes the impact of the alert for traffic.

The majority of the alerts come from road work, and because of this the \j Work Zone symbol is used by default.

Our question to this list is what APRS symbols we should use for these situations:

* Closed road
* Traffic incident - \' ? We have no way of knowing if it's a car, truck or whether there are several involved. Looking for a general traffic incident symbol.

We also would like some opinions on which symbol should have precedent in case of "closed road" because of "traffic incident".

Should the "closed road" symbol be used always for consistency?
Should the "traffic incident" symbol be used to provide information granularity?
The object text will contain a short description of the situation in any case.

de Morten LA1FTA