ISO/TS 21219-22:2017 specifies the logical data format of OpenLR^TM location references and general requirements of the method in Clause 6 and defines the structure of the TPEG toolkit for OpenLR location referencing (OLR) in Clauses 7, 8 and 9. The toolkit is intended to be used in the TPEG location referencing container (TPEG-LRC).

OpenLR? has been designed for the use case of transferring traffic information from a centre to in-vehicle systems, built-in or used as an add-on (PND, smart phone). The information transferred can consist of the current traffic situation at a certain location, a traffic forecast or special alerts. The corresponding locations are roads, a list of connected roads, points of interest, or areas.

In order to transmit location information from a sending to a receiving side, the OpenLR^TM method defines rules for generating map-independent location references, that is, the actual location references are generated dynamically not requiring use of pre-defined location references.