ITS – Wider Impacts
Traffic related data is now collected in novel ways, automatically and at very low or zero cost, and thus potentially giving relevant information about nearly anything the public, the planners, the industry or the decision makers might desire to know about. The traditional approach to using intelligent transportation systems (ITS), from the planners point of view, is to develop routines to collect information and use this to provide information to the travelers, and by so controlling their actions. Hence preventing them from making dangerous or suboptimal choices, and offering them smarter choices - in short "traffic management". Information about accidents, incidents, road maintenance, weather, delays etc. is already available for traffic centers and they convey this information to the travelers. In the age of internet of things the vehicles are in them selves connected and can provide valuable information that used to be cost consuming to collect. There are new information sources, the internal knowledge that the vehicle has about it self which in the current situation is not utilized to its full potential. Processing these data is probably not an activity for the general public, but is a fun challenge for people with some programming skills; evidently, as various traffic related information is increasingly available from apps for smart phones and web sites. As an example of a useful data source: The layman's access to the vehicle is through the On-board diagnostics plug, which is required in every vehicle. A quick search of Itunes and Googles play app-store reveals a huge interest in exploiting these data for fun competitions and processing these data to get more information about vehicle and driver performance. It requires sharing data, but this is done voluntarily. For example we get 79 hits on Itunes and more than 400 on Googles Play store for applications using on-board diagnostics (OBD) data. Thus there is a trend that indicates that more and more people are interested in what their vehicles know. Some of this information is also collected and structured in order to create a competitive environment. One example of such is Energy which uses extracted OBD data for establishing the most energy efficient driver. The public side of the system is based around an internet site and a Facebook group. This is one example how individuals use ITS data to force their agenda. When more information is made available through the ITS directive and other open data initiatives then the public can use ITS data. The authors prophecy is that the interest in collecting and exploiting these data will increase rapidly, given new legislation to utilize these data sources. This will provide information about the performance of the transport system, far beyond the data quality one could expect for data collected today. More information about the dynamic performance of the transport system has wider impacts than giving processed information back to the drivers; it would provide all kinds of information to both the public in general and to the decision maker. For traffic management experts, it would enhance input data and thereby improving all kinds of traffic related planning tools. The cardinal impact however would be that it allows the decision makers to specify requirements for the performance of the transport system, and more importantly, the measurement of the performance according to these requirements would be generally available, regardless of who the data provider or the infrastructure owner is.
- Record URL:
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Supplemental Notes:
- Abstract used by permission of Association for European Transport.
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Corporate Authors:
Association for European Transport (AET)
1 Vernon Mews, Vernon Street, West Kensington
London W14 0RL, -
Authors:
- Levin, Tomas
- Torset, Trude
- Nordtømme, Marianne Elvsaas
- Bjerkan, Kristin Ystmark
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Discussers:
- Lervåg, Lone-Eirin
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Conference:
- European Transport Conference 2013
- Location: Frankfurt , Germany
- Date: 2013-9-30 to 2013-10-2
- Publication Date: 2013
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: Digital/other
- Features: Figures; References;
- Pagination: 7p
- Monograph Title: European Transport Conference 2013: Strands
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Automobile navigation systems; Highway traffic control; Incident management; Intelligent transportation systems; Internet of things; Real time information; Traffic data; Traveler information and communication systems
- Identifier Terms: Google (Firm)
- Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01545687
- Record Type: Publication
- Files: TRIS
- Created Date: Nov 26 2014 4:01PM