The SIRI Situation Exchange service (SIRI-SX) allows the efficient exchange of data about situations caused by planned and unplanned incidents and events and is intended to support the use cases identified in Annex C. Situations are actual or potential perturbations to normal operation of a transport network. The SIRI-SX service uses the common SIRI communication framework and services which are described in CEN/TS 15531‑1 and not repeated in this document.

The Situation Exchange service has a rich Situation model, allowing a structured description of all aspects of multimodal travel Situations, including cause, scope, effect and rules for distribution to an audience. The structured values enabling computer based distribution through a wide variety of channels, and the presentation of data in different formats for different device and different audiences. The Situation Exchange Service allows the exchange of incident and event information between, amongst others:

SIR-SX uses a network model based on the CEN Transmodel conceptual model for public transport networks, schedules and operations, along with the CEN Identification of Fixed Objects in Public Transport (IFOPT) model for describing physical transport interchanges.

The Situation Exchange service is envisaged as a 'back office' capture and exchange service that will feed other public facing travel information dissemination systems, in particular those using the TPEG format. Transport Protocol Expert Group (TPEG) is a European Broadcasting Union fostered standard for broadcasting travel data over Digital Assisted Broadcasting (DAB) radio and other channels. To this end, the SIRI-SX situation classification model has been harmonised as far as possible with that of TPEG and DATEX2 so that full interoperability can be achieved. Uses of structured elements from TPEG, for which translations already exist in most European languages, also facilitates human readability in different national languages. Maintaining and improving a harmonisation with TPEG will be a continuing objective. In addition to the TPEG exchangeable content, SIRI-SX messages contain additional structured information which allows them to be processed in additional ways.

Situation and computer systems and applications are typically distributed, that is information will be captured on one system and exchanged with others for dissemination and further processing. This means that a message design is needed that allows the management of the identity of distributed messages over time and across different systems, so that subsequent updates to a Situation can be reconciled by different systems over a network, and obsolete messages can be retired automatically. The SIRI-SX situation model is designed to support the distributed management of Situations.