The development of automated and connected driving functions is currently a central objective for vehicle manufacturers. Such functions generally are introduced at different levels of automation with limited operational design domains (ODDs), which is gradually extended. However, a concise and practical description of ODDs has not yet been established. This work aims at providing a suitable and mathematically concise description of the operational design domain and relates the new description to the definitions of related terms that are widely used in the research community. This work follows a top-down approach. Engineering applications for ODD descriptions are introduced that go beyond scenario-based test design, like ADAS specification, function delimitation and cooperative, connected mobility. Furthermore the ODD can be seen as an instrument and language for the description of system capabilities, building a fundamental tool for cooperative and collaborative development and operations. A set of requirements on the parameterization of operational design domains is derived and methods for selecting suitable parameters are presented. The application of these methods is demonstrated with real world examples. Finally, a discussion of open issues provides starting points for continuous further research.

Driving requires continuous decision making from a driver taking into account all available relevant information. Automating driving tasks also automates the related decisions. However, humans are very good at dealing with bad quality, fuzzy, informal and incomplete information, whereas machines generally require solid quality information in a formalized format. Therefore, the development of automated driving functions relies on the availability of machine-usable information. A digital twin contains quality controlled information collected and augmented from different sources, ready to be supplied to such an automated driving function. An information model that describes all conceivably relevant information is necessary. To this end, a list of requirements that such an information model should meet is proposed and each requirement is argued for. Based on the anticipated services and applications that such a system should support, a collection of requirements for system architecture is derived. Information modeling is performed for selected relevant information groups. A system architecture has been proposed and validated with three different implementations, addressing several different applications to support decisions at a highway tunnel construction site in Austria and throughout the Test Bed Lower Saxony in Germany.