What is ITS?

Commercial transport operators are currently facing with more and more traffic problems. High traffic demand together with increasing congestion levels has encouraged the development of the new approach in order to try and solve a transport mobility issues. This new paradigm is called Intelligent transport systems (ITS).

ITS enables transparency of the information and their control, as well as improved ability for adequate traffic system response to the dynamic demands, which gives it the new attribute: intelligent.

Generally ‘’intelligent’’ stands for something that has the ability to operate under changeable conditions and in order to do that data collection and real-time processing has to be applied. Although the human is the intelligent component in traffic system, without the ability of networking and real-time information dissemination the traffic performances deteriorate rapidly (congestion, inefficient transport, negative impact on the environment etc.). Basic concepts and artificial intelligence techniques such as object recognition are used in the process of designing, development and implementation of ITS applications.

The term ITS ‘’enters’’ into scientific and transport dictionaries of traffic experts during the ’90, that is, after the first ITS Congress held in Paris 1994. Before that following terms were used: road transport telematics, intelligent highways systems.

Within ITS there are significant improvements in intelligent vehicle development, intelligent road development, electronic payment systems (smart cards), dynamic route guidance, intelligent crossroads with adaptable traffic control development, automatic vehicle location, emergency applications etc. The basic idea of ITS is to integrate individual solutions based on common ITS architecture and system requirements.

Clear and generally accepted definition of ITS can’t be found in the literature because this is new scientific area and technology. Bob and Judy McQueen say that ITS is an application of informatics in the process of planning and transport system management. Professor Kan Chen from University of Michigan defines ITS as a new set of ‘’tools’’ used for traffic system management and new set of user services based on three core terms: information, communication and integration. All ITS supporters say that this is a new ‘’umbrella’’ concept that covers wide range of transport and traffic solutions and the objectives of this solutions is to increase quality of traffic safety and performances, reduce travel times etc.

ITS can be defined as informational-communicational upgrade of a classic traffic, transport and logistic system which brings significant improvements for the network operators, service providers and society. In order to define, develop and implement ITS solutions it is necessary to understand basic concepts of cybernetics (system theory, theory of information, communication interfaces etc.) and basic knowledge of system engineering and its methods and tools. ITS must be analyzed from a holistic perspective which is transdisciplinary rather than interdisciplinary.

Benefits and effects of ITS solutions

ITS benefits can be evaluated through different categories of ITS effects. ITS benefits and mainly linked with following indicators:

• safety
• flow efficiency
• productivity and cost reduction
• environment benefits.

Each category and sub category of effects has to be linked to the certain user benefits such as new job opportunities, raising image of the city or region etc. These are called external benefits.

Stakeholders can be end users, network operators, system owners, service providers, tourist companies, local community, city municipality etc. Development and implementation of ITS projects brings three basic approaches for measuring the effects and benefits:

• Detail analysis of previous experiences and results exploitation
• Conducting pilot projects and determine possible benefits in real-time context
• Using traffic modeling and simulation.

Some of these benefits can be expressed through financial benefits while others can be analysed as public benefits. In this process different methods can be used such as cost and benefit analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, measuring traffic and transport indicators etc.

Author: professor Ivan Bošnjak, D.Sc.