VITA Person Entity Model

Version 2.0 - under construction

VITA is an application design for storage, manipulation and communication of person-related information in emergency management software applications. It defines a set of data structures, interfaces and interoperability features to be implemented by EM software applications.

Overview

VITA defines:

• an extensible data model for tagging, tracking and tracing of person entities (PT³)
• a set of interfaces to request and manipulate person entity data
• an XML-based data format to communicate person entity data (for ​EDXL-DE Payload)

The PT³ Data Model

under construction

Person Entity

Presence

Presence is the fact, that an entity is physically there at a particular location at a particular time. This abstract construction covers even cases of explicit absence, i.e. when the entity is not present at that time at that location.

A presence is established through a recognition event, that is when the entity is recognized by a dedicated observer (human or automatic).

Recognition can happen implicitly, e.g. when other data are obtained directly from the entity. In these cases, the time and location of the observer are used to establish a presence.

Recognition can happen explicitly, i.e. in response to observation requests. In these cases, the time and location as determined by the request are used to establish a presence. Explicit recognition events may lead to establishment of explicit absence (=this one not here now).

Identity

Contact Information

Address Information

Role and Status

Person

Names

Names are used to identify persons in human communication. However, names of persons do not have to be unique nor do they have to be exact, and thus are no reliable identity features. The following name fields are mandatory to exist in person records:

• first_name the first names (or the only name) of the person, in romanized script
• middle_name the person's middle name (if customary), in romanized script
• last_name the last name (mostly the family name) of the person, in romanized script
• local_name the full name of the person, in a local language and script

• Any of these mandatory name fields may be empty in a particular record except first_name.
• A name field value starting with a question mark ? indicates that this part of the name is uncertain or unknown.
• 'first', 'middle' and 'last' refer rather to the usual writing order of a person's full name than to the meaning of the name parts.
• There is no need to split the full name into segments if that is not customary in the person's country of origin - in such case first_name should represent the person's full name.
• In case there are multiple local languages, the local_name should be in the language/script that is most likely readable by that person and/or their relatives.
• An application may define additional name fields to represent e.g. titles, nicknames or pseudonyms, however, these additional fields must not be used to repeat or replace any of the mandatory fields.

Group

Findings

Functions

Interfaces

UUIDs

PT3F XML Format

under construction

The VITA XML format provides ​EDXL-DE payloads, and it is meant to supersede the ​Person Finder Interchange Format.

For the time being, this XML format shall be referred to as PT3F.

Implementations

• SahanaPy Person Management (in progress)