This page presents the Highlights of the European ITS Platform published in 2020. You may use the table of contents below to skip directly to the highlight of your interest and use the “back to the table of contents” link at the end of each highlight to return to the Table of Contents.
Table of Contents
· Validation of ITPS Quality Package discussed at EU EIP Online Workshop. 1
· Quality Package on C-ITS Information Quality introduced at EU EIP Online Workshop. 1
· Hard shoulders bus lanes in Northern Ireland (AA3 – UK). 6
· 2nd newsletter NAP&NB Harmonisation Group published 6
· EU EIP has published the ‘Road map and action plan to facilitate automated driving on TEN road network’. 6
· 3rd Web ITS Forum Webinar – Perspectives and contribution of road operators for facilitating automated driving. 7
· 2nd Web ITS Forum Webinar – Actions for Core Network Corridor Digitalization. 9
· 6th DATEX II Forum – webinar series. 11
· 1st Web ITS Forum Webinar: “Digitalisation, best practices and best use of the road: a preview of ITS Handbook for Road Operators” 12
· Virtual ITS European Congress 2020: Paper of the Platform on Cross Corridor Cooperation and the Reference Handbook. 17
· WG NAP discusses registration and NAP user insights. 19
· EU EIP workshop on facilitation of highly automated driving on TEN road network. 21
· Save-the date: Online Workshop on C-ITS Information Quality. 22
· Save-the date: Online Workshop on Truck Parking Information Quality. 24
· 1st Web ITS Forum invitation: Digitalisation, best practices and best use of the road: a preview of ITS Handbook for Road Operators. 25
· Top officers at the Italian webinar on “Autonomous driving and Smart Mobility” – European ITS platform was there. 26
· NAP 2020 Annual Report and upcoming PSA discussed in WG NAP meeting ITS Platform. 29
· New peak hour lane on E313 (AA3 – Belgium / Flanders) 30
· Intermodal Route Planner plays key role in re-developing Irish supply chains after Brexit 31
· Progressing with Metadata for National Access Points. 32
· Quality assessment of ITP in the Netherlands. 34
· First newsletter of NAP & NB Harmonisation Group published. 35
· Best Practices, Stakeholder Liaison and Cross Corridor Cooperation: new Reports from EU EIP are available online. 36
· Enhancement of ITS and Traffic Control Center Systems (AA3 – Portugal) 37
· Covid-19: what is happening in the European mobility? Ursa Major launched an Observatory 37
· Report on needs for autonomics functions of the Platform relayed by the Italian press. 40
· Updated Deliverable: Highly automated driving – Identification of requirements towards network operators. 42
· The updated Platform and Corridors fact-sheets are now on line. 43
· Smart Camera project Rijkswaterstaat successfully completed site acceptation test. 44
· Ramp metering deployment on Paris peri-urban motorways (AA2 France) 45
· Ghost vehicles detection project in the French Alps (AA3 France) 45
· Web conference shows great interest from NAP and NB community to cooperate. 46
· East-West Corridor GIS tool published. 48
· Needs for autonomic functions in road operators’ ITS. Good and bad practices from increasing the automation of road operators’ ITS – lessons learned – status update 2019. 49
· Variable speed limits and ramp metering in Lille (AA3 – France) 50
· Variable speed limits and ramp metering in Bordeaux (AA3 – France) 51
· Transport and "Green deal" – the European perspective. 52
· Summary of impacts, benefits and costs of highly automated driving – New deliverable online. 53
· NEXT-ITS Newsletter Nr 2. 54
· UMneo – Minister of Transport Rheinland-Pfalz published federal state wide Digital Roadworks Information: a Milestone for digitalisation. 54
· Save the date: Roadmap for Automated Driving – Virtual Workshop. 56
· Rijkswaterstaat presents first iRSU (movie) 58
· Cross Corridor Cooperation Workshop on Evaluation. 58
· 4th List of consolidated user requirements on data exchange. 59
· PEREX 4.0 – Upgrade of the Walloon traffic centre (AA3 – Belgium) 60
· The platform report shows 2019 uptake of National Access Points: still work to be done!
Validation of ITPS Quality Package discussed at EU EIP Online Workshop
18/12/2020
EU EIP sub-activity 4.1 “Determining Quality of European ITS Services” has been dedicated to establish frameworks for quality assessment in several ITS data and service domains.
One product of this sub-activity is a quality framework for the domain of Intelligent Truck Parking Information Services (ITPS). This framework, called the ITPS Quality Package, defines quality criteria, quality requirements and assessment methods for ITPS across Europe. It has been published here:
As a follow-up action, the ITPS Quality Package has been validated under real-life operating conditions in the Netherlands and in Germany.
The quality framework documents are available on the achievement page
These EU EIP elaborations were presented to about 20 truck parking stakeholders during an online workshop on December 17, 2020.
The workshop goals were to:
· learn about the current elaboration of the ITPS Quality Package,
· learn about the recent validation tests,
· discuss quality aspects and issues with the EU EIP team and other stakeholders, and
· give input for the upcoming work by EU EIP.
In the first part, Peter Lubrich, Radu Milea, Florin Vaduva and Michel Kusters from the EU EIP Quality group presented the background, motivation and working structure for the ITPS Quality Package, as well as the validation results, see the presentation.
Some new insights into the current ITPS Quality situation could be derived from the recent validations in the Netherlands and Germany. The Dutch validation looked on how individual quality criteria are met by the information basis in the National Access Point, based on ground-truth comparisons. One of the observations was that quality levels for public vs. private truck parking operators were quite different. Additionally, it was revealed that some private parking operators are not willing to expose their data on the NAP, to keep the number of clients rather restricted.
Within the German validation, the completeness of records about truck parking facilities, as provided in the National Access Point, was checked, looking at the mandatory data fields from the DATEX II profile. It was found that some basic data fields (such as geolocations) are mostly provided, whereas some other fields (such as service facilities) are only occasionally provided. Further, the completeness levels differ when looking individually at the German Bundesländer.
Both validations also indicate that the definitions from the ITPS Quality Package are stable. i.e. the criteria can be replicated in real-life environments, and quality requirements seem to be at reasonable levels.
Next, an open session was opened to review the approach of the EU EIP activity, and explore quality requirements by present ITPS experts. The following questions were discussed:
· Are the EU EIP quality definitions sufficient for a common understanding on Truck Parking Information quality?
· What is your experience on data quality from external providers?
· What is the role of private parking operators in the data eco-system?
· How to do quality checks for data about truck parking places?
The feedback on these questions was collected using a Miro Board, see here for results. Accordingly, data quality issues are important for the audience in terms of building a solid information base for the individual services. However, other issues seemed to be also important, such as the business perspectives of truck parking operators. It was stated that costs and benefits for delivering data (according to EC Regulations) do not always pay off. Further, audition procedures of truck parking facilities, to meet EU minimum standards, is another burden for such operators. For the Quality work, this means that the data perspective has to be put in a wider context, also reaching out to strategic and business goals of stakeholders in the ITPS domain
As one of the workshop benefits, new relationships were built between the EU EIP Quality group and dedicated ITPS experts and actors. The EU EIP Quality group will foster future exchange with these experts and actors in terms of quality issues.
Click here to return to the table of contents
Quality Package on C-ITS Information Quality introduced at EU EIP Online Workshop
17/12/2020
A major milestone of this sub-activity is a brand-new quality framework for the C-ITS domain. This framework, called the C-ITS Quality Package, adds quality aspects to parallel implementation and pilot projects across Europe.
The newest draft of the C-ITS Quality Package is now ready for the C-ITS audience and can be downloaded on the achievement page.
The C-ITS Quality Package was presented to about 40 C-ITS stakeholders during an EU EIP Online Workshop on December 14, 2020.
· learn about the current elaboration of the C-ITS Quality Framework,
· learn how “quality criteria”, “quality requirements” and “assessment methods” could be defined,
In the first part, Peter Lubrich from the EU EIP Quality group presented the background, motivation and working structure for the C-ITS Quality Package, see his presentation.
One basic element of the Quality Package is a set of definitions in terms of various Quality Criteria. Realising that data ecosystems in C-ITS may be very complex and diverse, the EU EIP activity started with a “zooming-in” approach, looking at specific communication chains and specific use cases. This way, some preliminary quality definitions were developed for those specific cases. The resulting Quality Criteria (e.g., latency) were quantified with (minimum) requirements per use case. In addition, these Quality Criteria were correlated with data elements from ETSI specifications (defining message contents in C-ITS) as well as evaluation techniques in current C-ITS deployment projects.
To reflect how Quality aspects are covered in European C-ITS projects so far, a “mini talk show” is held with the question “What quality aspects did you encounter in your C-ITS project?”. Partners from the projects C-Roads Germany [https://www.c-roads-germany.de/deutsch/pilotprojekt-hessen/], Nordic Way 2 [https://www.nordicway.net/] and C The Difference [http://c-thedifference.eu/] replied to this, linking to the individual projects elaborations, e.g. explaining how certain Quality Criteria were assessed within the project evaluations.
Next, an open session was opened to review the approach of the EU EIP activity and explore requirements by present C-ITS experts. The following questions were discussed:
· Are the EU EIP quality definitions sufficient for a common understanding on C-ITS quality?
· How to embed the EU EIP Quality definitions into the technology set-ups of C-ITS deployments?
· Which part of the communication value chain should we focus on?
· What is the way forward for the EU EIP Quality Package?
The feedback on these questions was collected using a Miro Board, see here for results. Accordingly, the audience put much attention on the necessary differentiation of technologies, communication actors and use cases, when describing and defining Quality Criteria. For example, the choice of a specific communication technology clearly affects the definition and setting of many Quality Criteria. The EU EIP Quality group will consider the need for such differentiation when further working on the C-ITS Quality Package.
As one of the workshop benefits, new relationships were built between the EU EIP Quality group and dedicated C-ITS experts and actors. This way, relevant documents and outcomes from other C-ITS groups and activities were recommended to the EU EIP Quality group to be considered, and some participants showed interest in future exchange in terms of Quality issues.
All in all, the workshop served as an important milestone for the EU EIP Quality activity, giving some orientation when developing the C-ITS Quality Package, and bringing this elaboration closer to the on-going C-ITS deployments across Europe.
Hard shoulders bus lanes in Northern Ireland (AA3 – UK)
10/12/2020
Additional Traffic management measures were needed to mitigate the impacts of the construction of the proposed York Street Interchange (YSI) scheme.
This project aims to improve the flow of traffic at the confluence of two motorways and the Westlink in Belfast, Northern Ireland. These measures include the introduction of hard shoulder bus lanes on M1 and M2 motorways into Belfast along with the provision of new CCTV Pan Tilt Zoom IP-based cameras for traffic monitoring purposes by the Traffic Information and Control Contre (TICC).
The works started in 2018 and were completed in 2020, with an estimated cost of 2234k€.
More information
2nd newsletter NAP&NB Harmonisation Group published
04/12/2020
The NAP&NB Harmonisation Groups has sent out its 2nd newsletter. In this newsletter the following topics are addressed:
· updates on the working group activities
· an invitation to Member State kick-off meeting/web calls for participation in the CEF PSA project proposal (15th and 17th of December 2020)
· updates on the cooperation with related projects like DATEX II, TN-ITS GO, EU EIP, DATA4PT, FRAME-NEXT and IDACS
· interesting events and readings
Enjoy reading and feel free to get back to the NAP&NB Harmonisation Group with questions and feedback!
EU EIP has published the ‘Road map and action plan to facilitate automated driving on TEN road network’.
02/12/2020
Stakeholders in mobility need to consider their position and potential benefits of automation. What is their vision, desired direction of development? What are their interests? What options and power do they have to steer the development? What can and should they practically do to prepare? In this document, we looked at these questions mainly from the point of view of the road authorities and operators – since they are core contributors to the EU EIP project. This roadmap document focuses on the following topics:
· impact of connected and highly automated driving on and role of physical and digital infrastructure, with a specific focus on the concept of Operational Design Domain (ODD);
· cost and benefits of automation for road authorities and operators.
For both topics, the document focuses on findings and efforts so far, and sets out a direction for future work. A stakeholder consultation process was part of the preparation work for this document, so various stakeholders’ views on future developments and roles are certainly part of the process. The process has led to a wide range of information and insights, and to a list of actions and recommendations. It is premature to commence deployments unless road authorities and operators are certain that the solutions invested in will not become obsolete in the short term. This highlights the importance of research, field trials, demonstrators, and deployment pilots, but also structured dialogue between the road authorities/operators and the automated driving industry. Some of the short-term actions, however, can be carried out with no regrets as they will benefit the road network operations already today and involving human-operated vehicles. Regarding timing, most actions are for the medium term. Actually, for many actions different phases can be distinguished: research, considering the options, making choices, deployment, etcetera. This means that thinking may need to start on the short term, while actual deployment (if chosen for) could take place on the long term. The goal is to be prepared for automated driving, have influence on the development so that road network operation does not suffer but rather improves, avoid excessive investments in vain, and to reap the potential benefits as soon as possible.
The final version of the Road map and action plan to facilitate automated driving on TEN road network (version 2020) is available to download now.
3rd Web ITS Forum Webinar – Perspectives and contribution of road operators for facilitating automated driving
18/11/2020
SAVE THE DATE 11th December 2020, 09:30 – 11:00 CET
Automation and automated driving are key tools in making the development to zero fatalities and low carbon emissions reality. Automated driving is advancing to driverless and self-driving vehicles in the road environments that enable this by providing the physical and digital infrastructure required by such vehicles. The road operators are in key position to provide those infrastructures as well as the traffic management support needed. How road authorities and operators should now proceed is still partly unclear due to many issues. The technology solutions are still evolving fast with regard to the sensors, AI and software of the automated vehicles making it difficult to predict what level of infrastructure support is needed by automated vehicles rolled out in 2030 or 2040. The details of the future automated vehicles’ behaviour, especially in critical situations where they cannot continue automated driving, are not available. The legal frameworks for driverless vehicles are not in place. These are only a few of the issues still remaining before the full-scale roll-out of highly automated vehicles as well as investments in the infrastructures to facilitate their operation on open roads.
The European Commission has actively supported to move towards connected and automated driving by enabling the necessary multi-stakeholder cooperation in the domain. This is done in the form of CCAM Platform and the CCAM Partnership and by funding support via the CEF, Horizon 2020 and the Horizon Europe programmes. EU EIP has contributed to these via its activity “Facilitating Automated Driving”.
Introduction
Geert van der Linden – European Commission DG MOVE
Highlights of the EU EIP achievements
· Requirements of highly automated driving to road operators – Ludovic Simon, Cerema
· Benefits and costs of highly automated driving – Magnus Hjälmdal, Sweco
· Roadmap and action plan to facilitate automated driving on TEN road network – Maarten Amelink, Rijkswaterstaat
· Automation of road operators’ own ITS – Mihai Niculescu, ITS Romania
Organizer
European ITS Platform
Moderator
Anna Schirokoff, Finnish Transport and Communication Agency
2nd Web ITS Forum Webinar – Actions for Core Network Corridor Digitalization
SAVE THE DATE 4th December 2020, 10:30 – 12:30 CET
Through the Digital Agenda and further the European Strategy for Data, the European Union has pointed at digitalization as a key element in future European development. Digitalization and data-driven innovation is expected to bring enormous benefits for citizens, not least within the mobility sector where digitalization will contribute to safer and more efficient transport with far less impact on the environment than what we currently see. Digitalization is a prerequisite for electric and automated mobility which are important parts of the European Green Deal.
A growing economy and an increasing demand for transport of goods and people also meet serious limitations to the possibility to expand the transport networks. In large parts of Europe investments in infrastructure are limited to elimination of bottlenecks and safety hazards. Increasing capacity by adding infrastructure has become very complicated and brings tremendous costs. Instead increased capacity has to follow from better use of investments already made which can be achieved through further digitalization. In addition, the users of the transport network will experience new and better services through access to digital means.
Hence digitalisation of road transport and new services provided by road operators and other actors can make significant contributions to Europe. However, experience shows that planning and budgets from a national perspective do not give a sufficiently high priority to multi-national cross-border investments to equip the European road corridors with the system and services needed and possible. Data driven innovation is hampered by lack of harmonization and scattered development.
Therefore, the European ITS Platform has developed a set of recommended actions for Core Network Corridor digitalization that go beyond the responsibilities of national authorities and contribute to the build of a European road transport system. These actions require European cooperation to take place and should be considered as necessary building blocks of coming European initiatives involving road authorities and operators.
INTRODUCTION
Claire Depré EC – Head of Sustainable & Intelligent Transport Unit DG MOVE
Arne Lindeberg overview of results of the Platform on the subject and outlook of the webinar
Roberto Arditi opening on behalf of European ITS Platform
ACTION PROPOSALS
• Benchmarking Corridor Performance- Merja Penttinen (VTT Research Manager, Finland)
• Platforms and Champions for digitalization leadership – Jan Willem Tierolf (RWS Coordinator ITS, The Netherlands)
• 7 Actions for CNC Digitalization – Jonas Sundberg (SWECO Senior Adviser, Sweden)
PANEL DISCUSSION
Arne Lindeberg, Swedish Transport Administration, Senior Adviser ITS and Freight Transport
Jan Willem Tierolf, Rijkswaterstaat, Coordinator ITS Stefan Myhrberg Ericsson, Business Development Manager, Connected Vehicle and Transport Ulrik Janusson, Scania CV, Technology Leader Connectivity
ORGANIZER European ITS Platform
MODERATOR Roberto Arditi (SINA Scientific Coordinator – ASTM Group)
6th DATEX II Forum – webinar series
16/11/2020
With Version 3, DATEX II is now at the heart of connectivity, supporting the digitalisation of road traffic and travel information. Next to important updates implemented for national road operators and service providers, DATEX II has broadened its focus to the domains of urban mobility, electromobility charging infrastructure, logistics, electronic traffic regulations and cooperative, connected and automated mobility. Both the Webinar Series and the physical Forum in June 2021 will reflect these themes and topics in both the management, functional and technical streams.
First webinar on 25th of November
For the first webinar day on the 25th of November, the 6th DATEX II Forum will open its online doors to all system users, software developers, information architects, ITS consultants as well as policy and decision-makers interested in DATEX II. In this first webinar EU EIP will contribute with a presentation about Recommended Service Profiles that have been developed together with EU EIP experts for the Reference Handbook on ITS deployment.
For the remaining four webinar days, two to three webinar talks will be organized on a Wednesday morning every 6 weeks from January 2021 until the physical Forum in June of 2021.
More information:
The detailed programme for day 1 of the webinar series (the 25th of November) can be downloaded or viewed here.
The overall webinar series programme can be downloaded or viewed here.
1st Web ITS Forum Webinar: “Digitalisation, best practices and best use of the road: a preview of ITS Handbook for Road Operators”
The first webinar of the European ITS Platform took place on 3rd November 2020. Its focus was on the preview of the “Reference Handbook for harmonized ITS Core Service Deployment in Europe” and on the European commitments towards a safer and sustainable road network.
More than 130 users registered from 23 different countries all over the world. More specifically, participants from the following countries attended the webinar: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands, United Kingdom.
The event, moderated by Roberto Arditi (Scientific Coordinator of SINA), delivered a great overview of the European agreed goals for the upcoming years, derived from the Green Deal and Vision Zero, and emphasized the important contribution that ITS can make to achieve them. It became clear that, through the large collaboration of road authorities and road operators by developing the “Reference Handbook for harmonized ITS Core Service Deployment in Europe”, an important knowledge base for a harmonized deployment of ITS on the Trans-European Transport Network was created.
Edoardo Felici (European Commission DG MOVE) summarized the European activities towards a sustainable and smart transport system. The key elements consider the European Strategy for Data and the new Green Deal. The importance of making data available and accessible according to the ITS directive, which will be revised next year, were underlined. To support the ITS digital infrastructure, the EC points to the coming PSA on National Access Points. Moreover, the importance of the “Reference Handbook for harmonized ITS Core Service Deployment in Europe” for an efficient and harmonized deployment of ITS Services in Europe, as well as the dissemination of accumulated knowledge was emphasized.
Orestis Giamarelos (Federal Highway Research Institute – BASt, Research Engineer) introduced the topic of the webinar by presenting the responses received from the participants of the webinar on two questions posed to them upon registration:
1. Digitalization and Traffic Management: What contribution can European road operators make to the Green Deal?
2. What is needed to integrate road operators’ actions in the EU digital strategy?
The responses are visualized in the word clouds below with the keywords/topics that most respondents mentioned in their response being shown most prominently.
Tobias Reiff (Federal Highway Research Institute – BASt, Research Engineer) then introduced the “Reference Handbook for harmonized ITS Core Service Deployment in Europe”. His speech focused especially on the development of interface requirements and information provision standards, which support the users of the Reference Handbook in their efforts to make the available data accessible and compliant to the ITS Directive. In addition, the bridge from ITS services to C-ITS has been established within the EU EIP activities and 100 deployment references were collected (and shared with the ITS community in an annex of the handbook) as part of the development process of the handbook, providing significant knowledge and lessons learned derived from real ITS deployments.
Following the presentation of the reference handbook, a rich debate on perspectives took place with Malika Seddi (ASECAP, General Secretary and CEO) and Serge van Dam (Rijkswaterstaat, Principal Advisor Traffic Management) as main contributors, complemented by all speakers/panellists, as well as the audience. The necessity of European harmonisation with a view towards connected and automated driving was commonly shared by the panellists. Harmonisation activities with respect to new ITS services and new mobility services are a key role to support the European road operator and road authorities in the years to come. Finally, cooperation among all actors is crucial in this path, as well as the need for technological development which is harmonized across Europe, ensuring that “no one is left behind”, as Edoardo Felici highlighted in his closing remark.
For those who could not attend the event (or those who would like to view it again) the recording of the webinar is available. To gain access please create a free account at the special website of the Web ITS Forum of the European ITS Platform and register for the webinar. If you had already registered for the event, you can log in with your credentials and you will be automatically granted access to the video recording.
Be sure not to miss the very interesting webinars that will follow in this series. The upcoming webinars will be announced on the EU EIP Website. You will be able to find more information about them and register on the website of the Web ITS Forum.
Virtual ITS European Congress 2020: Paper of the Platform on Cross Corridor Cooperation and the Reference Handbook
04/11/2020
This year the ITS European Congress takes place on November 9-10 in a virtual and more compact form due to the Covid pandemic.
If you have registered for the event, make sure that you don’t miss the paper and presentation of the Monitoring and Dissemination Activity of the European ITS Platform, presenting the work and achievements of the Cross Corridor Cooperation task of the Activity, introducing the upcoming "Reference Handbook for harmonized ITS Core Service Deployment in Europe" and providing an overview of lessons learnt from the collection of approximately 100 ITS Deployments within the framework of the Best Practice Collection task of the Activity.
The paper and presentation are available via the digital content library. You can find them under the following number and title: TP2228 – EU ITS platform on future motorway traffic: Cross corridor cooperation.
Additionally, you can find in the digital content library the paper on Road CID (Corridor Information Document), under the number and title: TP2325 – Road CID, to work on a corridor level!
More information on the Virtual ITS European Congress 2020:
This 2-day online event focused on Smart Mobility features live sessions and debates in a dynamic, seamless virtual environment. In the “High Level Sessions” policy makers and executives from the industry will debate on the main themes of the Congress, while in the “Focus Sessions” experts developing and deploying ITS will continue the discussion in detail. The opportunity to connect with leading mobility experts is also there, albeit again in a virtual form.
You can view the full programme of the event here: https://virtualitscongress.com/speakers-program/
A special feature of exceptional value that the Virtual ITS European Congress 2020 offers its delegates is the “digital content library”. It comes packed with more than 200 high quality papers and presentations, thereby providing the delegate with rich additional quality content, evaluated through the usual strict submission guidelines of the ITS European Congress.
WG NAP discusses registration and NAP user insights
21/10/2020
NAP Consumer Registration – the pros and cons
We’ve all had an online shopping experience where we can’t complete a purchase because we can’t remember a username or password. Registration and user accounts also apply to NAPs, WG NAP discussed the pros and cons of NAP registration and thought it would be interesting to open this up to a wider audience.
We had previously agreed that those supplying their traffic and travel data (or metadata) to the NAP should be required to register; but more recently we discussed registration for anyone that wanted to consume the NAP data, a user account model.
For the NAP, a user account model can be defined as:
A system that permits the user to register for an account or profile which uniquely identifies them in the NAP. Such a system provides a way to sign in to a previously-created account. Typically, in order to create an account, the user will be required to provide identification details such as a name, email address, phone number.
There are both advantages and disadvantages of requiring NAP consumers to register:
Pros
Cons
· Captures information about users that enables NAP providers to present relevant services & information to them immediately, and then during subsequent visits
· User preferences and profiles can be saved
· NAP providers can communicate with users when they are not interacting with the NAP, i.e. let them know about planned NAP maintenance, events, changes to any datasets they are using
· Privacy and security for sensitive transactions
· Gives the user a sense of involvement, the anonymous user becomes a NAP community member, this can facilitate a conversation between data consumers, NAP providers and data providers
· NAP operator has more control over access and can increase NAP security
· Registration can be perceived as a barrier to potential NAP users, and can frustrate users who want to get information quickly
· Mandatory registration can lead to the creation of dummy contact data from visitors who want to investigate the NAP but don’t want to share real contact details
· GDPR regulation compliance, with respect to personal data and privacy
· It requires secure storage and back-up of personally identifiable information
· Resources required to provide users with forgotten usernames and passwords
Across Europe NAPs have different structures; for example, there are data warehouses, market places, metadata registries, web portals; each has its own access features, some require registration of data consumers and some do not.
We concluded the user registration model depends on existing services, national guidance and the way data access has been carried out previously. In many cases there are existing systems or procedures in place, or an existing precedence that led to a service being delivered in a specific way.
Even so, it should be possible for any user to read or view basic information, in order to gain a level of access to the NAP without going through a registration procedure, with any mandatory registration requirements being straightforward and clearly communicated.
NAP User Insight
What’s it like to be a new NAP user?
If NAPs are to help stimulate development of new data services and open up data sets to new data users – they need meet user needs and expectations.
So far the focus of the WG NAP has been on set up and implementation based on the delegated regulation text, not covering the data or NAP contents. Now we consider what it’s like to be a new NAP user looking for data.
To gain further insight into the user experience we have set up a WG NAP Data Content Analysis task. This task has explored several European Truck Parking NAPs from an “outsiders” point of view. We looked five national NAPs examining the following aspects:
· How to search the NAP
· How to access the data (guest, registration)
· Description of data /metadata (language)
· Format / language of datasets
· How to use the data (API existence, push/pull services)
This exercise showed that most Truck Parking NAPs have well designed user-friendly interfaces, with effective search facilities to find information and datasets. Most NAPs allow users to view dataset information and metadata without registration, which makes the NAPs more accessible.
On the ease of registration, in some cases it was difficult to register for the NAP, with multiple processes to complete, and limited information on the registration process available.
A fuller analysis of Truck Parking, RTTI and SRTI datasets, along with recommendations will be published in the 2020 NAP Annual Report on the NAP achievement page.
If you have any questions or comments on these topics, please contact Louis Hendriks.
EU EIP workshop on facilitation of highly automated driving on TEN road network
EU EIP sub-activity 4.2 “Facilitating automated Driving” organised a virtual workshop on 30 September to validate the “Road map and action plan to facilitate automated driving on TEN road network” document’s final draft. The workshop focused on two aspects of highly automated driving – the requirements towards physical and digital infrastructure as well as the benefits and costs of automated driving.
The workshop attracted 90 experts from around Europe, and their interactions and the panel discussions gave valuable insights into the topics validating the roadmap while also providing specific additional inputs to it.
The workshop highlighted the importance of having all stakeholders working together, communication and exchange of views between the stakeholders, importance and inclusion of end users as well as regulation to safeguard the wellbeing of travellers.
The workshop presentations and proceedings are available on the achievement webpage.
Save-the date: Online Workshop on C-ITS Information Quality
16/10/2020
EU EIP sub-activity 4.1 is dedicated to establishing Quality Frameworks for various domains of ITS.
For the domain of C-ITS services, we are currently drafting a first elaboration of such Quality Framework, taken into consideration quality aspects from ongoing C-ITS deployments, such as in C-Roads.
To exchange the first outcomes, EU EIP is inviting C-ITS stakeholders to join our:
EU EIP Workshop on C-ITS Information Quality
Monday, December 14, 10:00-12:00 ET
Via WebEx Online Conference
Here, you will have the opportunity:
· To learn about the current elaboration of the C-ITS Quality Framework
· To learn how “quality criteria”, “quality requirements” and “assessment methods” could be defined
· To discuss quality aspects and issues with the EU EIP team and other stakeholders
· To give input for the upcoming work by EU EIP
The workshop is free of charge, but a registration is needed.
Please send a short email to Peter Lubrich, member of EU EIP sub-activity 4.1.
An agenda and a login information will be sent to registered participants ahead of time.
Save-the date: Online Workshop on Truck Parking Information Quality
For the domain of Truck Parking Information Services, we have previously published a first version of a Quality Framework .
To improve and validate this effort, the Quality Framework was recently tested with real-life truck parking data from the Netherlands and Germany.
The reports can be found at the achievement webpage.
To exchange the latest outcomes, EU EIP is inviting Truck Parking Information stakeholders to join our:
EU EIP Workshop on Truck Parking Information Quality
Thursday, December 17, 10:00-12:00 CET Via WebEx Online Conference
· To learn about the current elaboration of the Quality Framework
· To learn about the recent validation tests
The workshop is free of charge, but a registration is needed. Please send a short email to Peter Lubrich, member of EU EIP sub-activity 4.1. An agenda and a login information will be sent to registered participants ahead of time.
1st Web ITS Forum invitation: Digitalisation, best practices and best use of the road: a preview of ITS Handbook for Road Operators
15/10/2020
The European ITS Platform invites you to the 1st Webinar of the Web ITS Forum Webinar series. The full programme of the Webinar series will be announced soon.
The 1st Webinar of the series on "Digitalisation, best practices and best use of the road: a preview of the ITS Handbook for Road Operators" will take place on Tuesday, 3rd November 2020.
Please save the date and register for the event (registration in advance is required). Details on the programme of the 1st Webinar is provided below. We hope to see you there!
1st Web ITS Forum: Digitalisation, best practices and best use of the road: a preview of the ITS Handbook for Road Operators
3rd November 2020, 11:00 – 12:30 CET
European Commission DG MOVE Claire Depré
Preview of ITS Handbook
How digitalization and road operators can contribute to European societal challenges – Tobias Reiff (Federal Highway Research Institute – BASt, Research Engineer)
Panel discussion
Malika Seddi (ASECAP, General Secretary and CEO)
Serge van Dam (Rijkswaterstaat, Principal Advisor Traffic Management)
Organizer European ITS Platform
Moderator Roberto Arditi (SINA Scientific Coordinator – ASTM Group)
The European ITS Platform is hosting online this event. To join the meeting and take part in the debate with the panellists, registration in advance is required.
Top officers at the Italian webinar on “Autonomous driving and Smart Mobility” – European ITS platform was there
12/10/2020
The opening was performed by the European Commissioner for Transport Adina-Ioana Vălean and the Italian Minister of Infrastructure and Transport Paola De Micheli. Interventions of top level speakers (see hereinafter) have brought from the analyses of the current situation on “Automated vehicles: challenges and opportunities for road operators and road authorities” until the perspective of future developments and achievements.
The seminar was promoted by Italian PIARC in partnership with the Italian Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport (MIT), ANAS (Italian Road Administration) and the role of Engineers of Rome. It was be impeccably moderated by Domenico Crocco (Head of International Affairs in ANAS and First Delegate of PIARC Italy).
The European ITS Platform had the opportunity to contribute to the event and contribute to the International and European “mood” of the event.
Not only success of contents: the webinar had a huge success on figures with about 1.000 delegates connected. Next event of this series will be held on November 16, 2020 and it will focus on Road safety.
We invite you to follow the registration of the event, available in the ANAS YouTube channel:
Domenico Crocco Head of International Affairs ANAS (Italian – starting 47.08)
Adina-Ioana Vălean European Commissioner for Transport (English – starting 52.15)
Paola De Micheli Italian Minister of Infrastructure and Transport (Italian – starting 1:07:34)
Claudio Andrea Gemme, President ANAS (Italian – starting 1:25:30)
Claude Van Rooten, President of World Road Association, (English – starting 1:33:36)
Carla Cappiello, President Role of Engineers of Rome (Italian – starting 1:41:16)
Angelo Sticchi Damiani, President ACI – Automobile Club d’Italia (Italian – starting 1:49:21)
Matteo Ignaccolo, President AIIT/Association engineering, traffic and transport (Italian – starting 1:56:35)
Rossella Panero, President TTS Italian (Italian – starting 2:00:50)
Mario Nobile Director General Italian Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport (Italian – starting 2:04_11 )
Luigi Carrarini, Project Manager Smart Road ANAS (Italian – starting 2:22:30)
Alberto Broggi, General Manager Vislab/Ambarella (Italian – starting 2:36:13)
Enrico Pisino, President Transport Automotive Cluster 2020 (Italian – starting 2:49:17)
Presentation from members of the PIARC Task Force “Automated vehicles: challenges and opportunities for road operators and road authorities” and best practices:
· Katherine Kortum, USA Senior Program Officer TRB -Transportation Research Board (English-starting 3:04:01)
· Anat Bonshtien, ISRAEL Chairman and Director of the Fuel Choices and Smart Mobility Initiative at Israel Prime Minister’s Office (English – starting 3:13:24)
· Lior Sethon, ISRAEL Deputy General Manager Mobileye/Intel (English – starting 3:19:14)
· Sun Zhonghua, CHINA Huawei, Director of Department (English – starting 3:45:03)
Roberto Arditi, SINA – Director Road Safety and President Italian Technical Committee on National policies and programs for road safety of PIARC – EU EIP (Italian – starting 4:04:58)
Massimo Simonini, CEO and General Manager ANAS, President PIARC Italia (Italian – starting 4:17:11)
NAP 2020 Annual Report and upcoming PSA discussed in WG NAP meeting ITS Platform
On October 7th and 8th members of the EU EIP WG NAP (National Access Points) held their online project meeting. Main topics discussed were (1) the preparation of the EU EIP NAP 2020 Annual Report and (2) the upcoming Programme Support Action (PSA) for a “Coordination mechanism for NAPs in Europe”.
Currently the WG NAP partners are working hard to finalize the respective sections of the NAP Annual Report 2020. This will be the 5th edition since the first Annual Report was published in 2016. The NAP 2020 Annual Report is expected to be ready in December 2020.
Members of the WG NAP of EU EIP also keep a close look on the expected EC call for proposal for the PSA for a coordination mechanism for NAPs in Europe. It is expected that the PSA call will be published in November 2020. WG NAP foresees that many of their activities will be taken over by this new NAP platform, which is expected also to join forces with two other PSAs currently running, i.e. DATEX II and TN-ITS GO.
National Access Points and National Bodies that are interested to participate in this PSA can send an e-mail to Louis Hendriks – Rijkswaterstaat (co-chair of the NAP&NB Harmonisation Group that will prepare a proposal for this upcoming PSA call.)
09/10/2020
On Monday 28 September 2020 at 6 AM the new peak hour lane on the E313 between Lummen and Beringen in both directions is inaugurated by the Flemish minister.
In the press release it was mentioned that the realisation of this project was supported by the EC via the Arc Atlantique 3 program.
The peak hour lane with a length of 6 km in both directions will solve the congestion in the morning and the evening peak.
The Flemish traffic centre will monitor traffic in order to produce an evaluation report.
Intermodal Route Planner plays key role in re-developing Irish supply chains after Brexit
02/10/2020
The Brexit transition period will come to an end on 31st December 2020. No matter what, if any, trade agreement between Great Britain and the EU is put into place every vehicle travelling between Continental Europe and Ireland using Landbridge across Britain from then on will be subject to Customs and other Border controls.
Currently 150,000 trucks use the Landbridge each year securing a Dublin to Calais transit time of under 20 hours based on multiple daily sailings and carrying mainly food, pharmaceutical and other high-tech products. It is now clear that the new border controls at EU and UK Ports will undermine the effectiveness of the Landbridge model leading to significant additional costs and uncertain timelines.
As overall Irish trade with Europe has increased, and particularly since Brexit was announced, there has been a substantial development of direct ro-ro and lo-lo services to Atlantic Arc ports. Much of the trailer traffic using the direct services is shipped on an unaccompanied basis and increasingly trailers and containers are on-forwarded using port connected rail and barge services to Distribution Centres located close to shipment destination.
Finding the appropriate intermodal solution for their shipments has emerged as a significant issue for shippers and forwarders. The intermodal route planner, developed as a component of the EU EIP project, is now proving its worth and provides the knowledge base required. It is being actively promoted by the Irish Exporters Association and other partners in the project. The planner is found at: https://eastwestcorridor.eu.
The intermodal route planner contains approximately 1.000 terminals, almost 200 intermodal operators (sea, barge, rail), 20.000 direct connections (and innumerable indirect connections) and 37.000 weekly departures.
Progressing with Metadata for National Access Points
For many years, the NAP Working Group has fostered the harmonised usage of Metadata across European NAPs.
One major milestone is the “Coordinated Metadata Catalogue” as a blueprint for Metadata structures in NAP data portals. The “Catalogue document” was updated in 2019 and can be accessed at the NAP achievement webpage.
So far, the “Catalogue” has been implemented in many NAPs and is often considered by other NAPs, whenever these are upgraded or newly created. See the German example of such implementation in the next figure.
However, the world of Metadata is evolving. Today, everyone speaks about interoperability, harvesting and linking of Metadata. While the “Catalogue” is a proprietary approach to define Metadata elements, a more advanced and interoperable approach is now needed. This way, we want to bring the “Catalogue” to a new stage, allowing interoperability with other data domains, in particular open data, and reusing established Metadata techniques.
One established technique is the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the RDF-based DCAT-AP Metadata specification, as developed by a joint initiative of EU organizations:
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/semantic-interoperability-community-semic/solution/dcat-application-profile-data-portals-europe
The NAP working group has now drafted a DCAT-AP extension for the NAP domain, namely “napDCAT-AP”. Here, we will build upon the DCAT-AP specification and adopt it to the particular domain of NAP Metadata.
The next figure shows how some essential elements from the DCAT-AP data model are mapped to the NAP domain:
Based on this mapping, “napDCAT-AP” adopts and adds elements to the DCAT-AP data model, with the goal to describe NAP-specific Metadata. It is further compatible with the “Coordinated Metadata Catalogue”.
For more details on the “napDCAT-AP” concept, see the Powerpoint presentation.
A draft of the “napDCAT-AP” specification can be accessed here:
https://eueip.github.io/napDCAT-AP/
Progress of this work will be reported on the EU EIP website.
If you are interested in this work or want to comment on this, please contact EU EIP member Peter Lubrich (BASt).
Quality assessment of ITP in the Netherlands
30/09/2020
Since 2015 the National Data Warehouse for Traffic Information (NDW) is responsible for the publication of data related to safe and secure Truck Parking Facilities, according to the delegated Regulation (EU) No 885/2013 (part of ITS Directive 2010/40/EU). Data on both public and private truck parking facilities (TP’s) is accessible on the Dutch “National Access Point (NAP)” (https://nt.ndw.nu/).
Within the Sub-Activity EU EIP 4.1 (Quality of ITS services) quality criteria and service levels are proposed in so called Quality Packages (QP) to determine the quality of several ITS services in the different member states. For the service ITP Rijkswaterstaat (Dutch national Road Authority) carried out an assessment on truck parking facilities located in a range of max. 5 km from the priority highways, including the European Core Network. This article gives an overview of the main findings. A more extensive version, including the data collection, the assessment method, the results and the conclusions, can be downloaded here.
Based on the quality assessment of truck parking facilities carried out in the Netherlands, the following can be concluded:
· The information of the public TP’s on the NAP is complete and up to date (100% coverage). The information of private TP’s on the NAP is for half of the cases incomplete and out of date (+/- 55% coverage).
· Most of the assessed private TP’s (the selection of TP’s that have information on the NAP) have correctly presented their parking capacity, driver facilities and truck services.
· Security labeling is not uniform; information about security facilities (e.g. fence, CCTV) seem to be more reliable.
· Nearly all private TP’s have information on the NAP that’s >5 years old.
· The NAP price setting option (€/hr) doesn’t match with the TP’s business format (e.g. buy a meal & get parking ticket).
· · Some private TP’s have concerns about (negative) impact on their business adding information on the NAP.
The assessment will be used to validate and enhance a formerly released Quality Framework for Intelligent Truck Parking Services. A formal deliverable on this validation, also looking into a similar assessment of truck parking data in Germany, will be published at the EU EIP website at the end of 2020.
First newsletter of NAP & NB Harmonisation Group published
28/09/2020
The Working Group NAP (National Access Points) of the EU EIP project was one of the initiators of the NAP&NB Harmonisation Group. This week the NAP&NB Harmonisation Group has published its first Newsletter, covering the following topics:
· The goals of this group of National Access Points (NAPs) and National Bodies (NBs): Primarily to strengthen the position and role of NAPs as backbone of European ITS, transport and mobility data infrastructure.
· The organisation of the NAP & NB Harmonisation Group. Five working groups have been established:
– WG1 Data standards and NAP architecture – WG2 National Body processes – WG3 Best practices – WG4 External Connections, influencing and communications – WG5 Proposal Coordination
· The Concept Paper of the European Commission (DG MOVE) which outlines their preparation of a CEF PSA call on a “Coordination mechanism to federate the National Access Points established under the ITS Directive”.
· The upcoming Programme Support Action and the role of the NAP & NB Harmonisation Group to submit a project proposal for this call.
As major producers and users of data and insights partners in the EU EIP project do see real benefits and good ground for a valuable cooperation between the future NAP platform and EU EIP in their respective roles, which was also expressed in an EU EIP position paper. In this collaboration, the EU EIP and its successor together with the new CEF PSA project will discuss the needs, challenges and opportunities provided by traffic and transport data for the delivery of the future traffic management services, both from a deployment standpoint as well as in terms of operation and coordination of traffic management in Europe.
Best Practices, Stakeholder Liaison and Cross Corridor Cooperation: new Reports from EU EIP are available online
03/08/2020
Looking for something to read during the summer holidays? If so, then it is the right time to remind you of the annual reports of Activity 2, which you can download below
1. Achievements Report on collecting best practice in ITS deployment 2019
The report presents an overview of the accomplishments of the Platform in the collection of new and updated Best Practices (BPs). After a statistical analysis of the collected Best Practices, the report goes on to describe the actions taken to not only increase their number but also improve their quality.
The report is available here.
2. Report on Stakeholder Liaison and Cross Corridor Cooperation 2019
A2 liaises with external stakeholders in order to disseminate EU EIP results, discuss framework conditions, elicit requirements and follow ITS deployment in other projects (Urban, C-ITS…) in the vast and still growing landscape of ITS. To this end, A2 organises targeted stakeholder workshops and participates in major events in the field presenting its tasks and results, as well as taking an active part in the strategic dialogue with stakeholders by participating in round table discussions.
This report presents the major events of the year 2019, which concern the liaison with external stakeholders. It contains short reports of these events in chronological order. Links to the relevant websites or the EU EIP portal (www.its-platform.eu) are provided at the end of each event report, in order to provide the interested user with more detailed information.
This year the annual report on Stakeholder Liaison has been extended to additionally present in the same manner the results of the Cross Corridor Cooperation task, which started in 2018 and strongly intensified in 2019. First results of cooperation between the ITS Corridors are already visible with commonly organised meetings and workshops taking place, as well as an increased participation in corridor meetings and workshops of members of other corridors and/or the A2 Expert Groups, achieving this way a significant knowledge gain for all parties.
31/07/2020
Upgrade, extension and renewal of ITS sub-systems and road equipment in 235km of Portugal Core network (including a tunnel) to improve traffic condition and travel time information services, as well as incident detection, thus allowing for better journey planning and safer travelling for different types of end users. The works started in 2017 and will end in 2020, with an estimated cost of 850k€.
ArcAtlantique3 project POR-03 addresses the efficient provision of real time traffic information for end users, improving the level of service. As it involves a long section of core network highways (A1, A3, A4, A25, A17, A29, A44), it will allow the improvement of the information inputs to the existing road operation and traffic management systems, also integrating the road incidents’ detection with traffic management. This project addresses a section of core urban highway network, as well as a tunnel, in which traffic management can significantly improve the level of service.
Read more
Covid-19: what is happening in the European mobility? Ursa Major launched an Observatory
22/06/2020
In May URSA MAJOR neo Corridor launched an "Observatory of the Mobility during Covid" within the Evaluation task, led by SINA. This Observatory targets to monitor the mobility and traffic volumes trying to understand trends during the Covid-19 Pandemic on part of the European transport network of interest for URSA MAJOR.
During Covid-19 Pandemic mobility was completely transformed and dramatically reduced with relevant consequences on countries’ economies and mobility operators’ conditions. Since it is a unique situation in the history, it is very interesting to analyse this event, to see what has changed and which the trends of recovery of this situation are.
Traffic volumes were very low, especially private cars, but heavy vehicles and private cars traffic is increasing again with different trends. But the increase and recovery to high volumes will, as well known, depend on national GDP trends. The use of private car could change in future. A more diffuse use of smart working habits (including working from home) could change the traffic demand and modify traffic distribution during the day with the reduction of peak hours.
This kind of analysis will be performed with the help of the data provided by UM Partners and the results and trends given back to URSA MAJOR neo community.
With the aim to draft a first report, implementing bodies of UM decided to collect and share data to understand what happened e.g. each Wednesday, Sunday and an aggregated data for the week referring to the months of February, March and April 2020. The reference data (to be compared with) should be pre-Covid and ideally of the same period of the year before. Afterwards the collection will be on a bi-monthly basis.
The analysis will be based on fixed Traffic Indicators on different motorway (road) sections and from Ports and Interports involved in UMneo Corridor such as:
· Traffic volumes for LV and HV (veh/h)
· Share of HV traffic (%)
· Average speeds for LV and HV (km/h)
· Actual usage of rest areas and remaining capacity
· Number of accidents
· Cross Border Traffic for LV and HV (veh/h)
· Interports (trains, loading units – trailers, swap bodies, containers, trucks generated)
· KPI for Ports (movements, tons, containers, trailers)
Reports will allow URSA MAJOR neo community to take advantage on traffic and mobility trends on the UM neo network and thus better compare local, with regional, national and international tendencies.
Furthermore findings will be shared with other ITS Corridors and the EU EIP Project.
Report on needs for autonomics functions of the Platform relayed by the Italian press
11/06/2020
The Italian magazine "LeStrade", specialized in mobility infrastructures, published an article devoted to the report "Needs for autonomic function in ITS road operator" published (April 2020) by the European ITS Platform.
The article drafted by the journalist Stefano Chiara, was published on the issue 5/2020 of the magazine.
The report was drafted by a working group coordinated by ITS Romania (Mihai Niculescu) and DGT Spain (Ana Blanco), with the participation of partners from Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK.
The article briefly presents the structure of the document, a QR code allowing the download of the original document from the EUEIP website.
· Chapter 1, introduction: aims, the working methodology and the structure.
· Chapter 2: main needs of road operators that could be supported by the autonomous functions of ITS systems. The authors propose some of the autonomous functions they consider most relevant and for each function, they outline a map presenting the possible correlations between specific needs and solving options.
· Chapter 3: the point of view of the autonomic implementation within the operations and services of a traffic control center. The focus is mainly related on a series of services already selected in the context of a previous report dedicated to "Autonomic functions implemented in existing ITS contexts (update 2019)".
· Chapter 4: a SWOT analysis on the topic of the introduction of automation in traffic control centers and a roadmap to 2030 for the implementation of autonomic functions in current and future control centers.
· Chapter 5: a set of key performance indicators (KPI) that can be used to test the effects of the introduction of automation and autonomic functions. The definition of the required targets as well as of the related indicators is based on existing implementations, as well as on the direct experience of the authors.
The main purpose of task 4 work group is correctly identified, defining the requirements to increase the level of automation both of the road side ITS systems and the traffic control centers (TCC) to facilitate the development of automated driving. The article summarized from the report a list of "best practices" that can be adopted by road operators/authority to implement the automation procedures presented, as well as some of the "bad practices" obviously to be avoided.
The approach does not target binding requirements for road operators/road authorities, but rather provides a series of useful suggestions to make operators able to evaluate advantages of a possible investment in automation.
The document is proposing an interesting roadmap based on three main stages to 2021, 2024 and 2027: 2030 is therefore considered as the final objective of a ten-year period, characterized by relevant technological developments (both in the automated driving sector and in the C-ITS/TCC field) that road operators and road authority should consider to update their systems. The roadmap is discussed in detail.
The article presents a brief conclusion to sum up the whole argument:
Research on autonomic functions in the ITS road context must continue. Its cornerstones are:
· To improve the quality of the data collected, better integration of TCC and road environment, so that autonomic systems could operate in safety and reliability without human intervention.
· The development of Artificial Intelligence software for autonomic functions and, in particular, self-management.
Updated Deliverable: Highly automated driving – Identification of requirements towards network operators
EU EIP has produced an updated version of its deliverable ”Identification of requirements towards network operators” with regard to highly automated driving. The deliverable elaborates on the expectations that the general public, owners of commercial vehicles and fleets, and road network managers have on automated driving. Then the deliverable looks at determining the requirements of automated vehicles via their Operational Design Domain (ODD) towards physical and digital infrastructure. In addition, it discusses topics related to legal and regulation framework, and lists the related national strategies and actions. Finally, the deliverable concludes with recommendations of next steps for the road operators.
Download the updated deliverable here.
The updated Platform and Corridors fact-sheets are now on line
27/05/2020
The reports including the collection of highlights published by the EU EIP and corridors in 2019 and in the 2015-2016 two-year period have been drafted and published. This way the “fact sheet” page of the platform was duly updated. The full set of reports (including all similar reports previously published) are now available online and accessible through the following page.
The information collected in the Reports is divided into three sections:
• Section 1 – News on direct activities of the Platform
• Section 2 – Communication liaise with Corridors: news published in Corridor sections of the website its-platform.eu
• Section 3 – Other news and announcements
Reports also include links and QR codes that allow the reader to easily reach full articles and relevant results.
Smart Camera project Rijkswaterstaat successfully completed site acceptation test.
26/05/2020
Today Rijkswaterstaat achieved a new milestone in Rijkswaterstaat’s traffic centre Rhoon (close to Rotterdam). The Site Acceptation Test of the video analysis system was successfully completed, which is an important step in this Proof of Concept of the Smart Cameras project. Now a development and optimisation period of six month will start in which we will jointly further develop the quality and functionality of the system. The Smart Cameras project is part of the Arc Atlantique project, cofunded by the European CEF programme.
If you want to know more about the aims of Rijkswaterstaat’s project Smart Cameras, please watch the movie at this link.
08/05/2020
More than 4 millions road users are travelling every day on highways and national roads of Île-de-France. These roads carry a very dense traffic and are often congested. At the moment, DIRIF is implementing, on highways access ramps, traffic management measures (ramp metering, dynamic speed limits) to reduce congestion and travel times during peak hours.
The project is part of a global plan which consists in equipping 75 access ramps on the highways of the Ile de France Region.
Accidents caused by ghost vehicles, although few in number (merely 0.3% of total accidents in 2017), are often very serious (almost 14% of deadly accidents in 2017) and generally produce a strong media impact. The responses to prevent such incidents are often insufficient. To develop new ideas and experiments, one must rather look at the implementation of a warning system as quick as possible to warn car-drivers riding the right direction and facing such behavior. The Ghost vehicle detection project which has been deployed on French motorway network of APRR and AREA concessionaires, aims to try to respond to that issue.
Web conference shows great interest from NAP and NB community to cooperate
04/05/2020
On 30 April 2020 a web conference was organized for the community of National Access Points and National Bodies. No less than 57 participants from over 20 countries participated in this online event, showing that there is a great interest in understanding how we can harmonize the NAPs, share best practices and cooperate on improving quality and access to data in order to facilitate and increase the use of data by information service providers.
Since their first gathering in November 2018 this NAP & NB Harmonisation Group has underlined the need for cooperation. At the end of 2019 a small group was established to write a position paper. During the web conference this paper was discussed, including an organizational structure and temporary chairs for the Harmonisation Group and the various Working Groups.
Another important topic presented during the web conference was the concept paper of DG MOVE concerning a so-called federated platform of NAPs. In this paper DG MOVE describes the foreseen coordination mechanism for NAPs, including a first description of a number of possible work packages. A call for proposals for this Programme Support Action is expected to be published in 2020.
During the web conference it was concluded that the NAP & NB Harmonisation Group is perfectly suited to address this call, since this group already has the major stakeholders onboard, knows the needs and the issues of the stakeholders, and last but not least has an organisation in place with Working Groups matching the proposed work packages mentioned in DG MOVE’s concept paper.
All relevant documents and the Powerpoint of the meeting can be downloaded here:
– PowerPoint of meeting 30 April 2020
– Summary Report of meeting 30 April 2020
– Position paper NAP and National Body Harmonisation Group
– Concept paper – Coordination mechanism to federate the National Access Points established under the ITS Directive.
For more information about the NAP & NB Harmonisation Group contact Timo Hoffmann.
East-West Corridor GIS tool published
Over the past two years the East-West Corridor of the EU EIP project has made an inventory of ITS projects that are or have been implemented on the EWC and these projects have been categorised. The results are now accessible via the EWC GIS tool at the following url: www.mobycon.nl/eastwestcorridor.
GIS tool
The East-West Corridor project inventory GIS tool is a web application designed to visualize the various types of ITS projects implemented on the EWC network. It can be used without particular expertise by all interested parties that want to know more about the type of ITS projects implemented on this corridor. It allows the users to search for specific ITS implementations on the EWC.
Source of projects
This GIS tool provides an overview of approximately 250 ITS projects on the East West Corridor. The ITS projects included are provided by partners of the EU EIP project. These projects can be financed either nationally or with European co-funding (e.g. CEF). The projects in the GIS tool come from either of the following sources:
· Arc Atlantique (CEF ITS corridor project)
· Next-ITS (CEF ITS Corridor project)
· URSA MAJOR (CEF ITS Corridor project)
· Project lists from Belgium, Estonia, Germany, Ireland, Poland, The Netherlands
· Other.
Types of ITS projects
All ITS projects in this GIS tool have been categorised under one or more of the following types of ITS implementations:
· Dynamic lane management
· Speed Limit Information & Variable Speed Limit
· Hard Shoulder Running
· HGV Overtaking Ban
· Ramp Metering
· Roadwork and Hazard Warning
· Static Truck Parking Information including Security
· Dynamic Truck Parking Information
· Truck Parking Optimisation
· National Traffic Management Plans
· Cross-border Traffic Management Plans
· International Traffic Management Plans
· National Access Point for Safe and Secure Truck Parking (NAP SSTP)
· National Access Point for Safety Related Traffic Information Services (NAP SRTI)
· National Access Point for Real-Time Traffic Information Services (NAP RTTI)
· National Access Point for Multimodal Travel Information Services (NAP MMTIS)
· C-ITS
· Floating Car Data / Probe Vehicle Data
· DATEX II
· Traffic Management Centre (TMC) systems
· Traffic Information Service
· Other (e.g. port related projects).
The user can select one or more of these types of ITS implementations, which will then be shown on the map.
About the East-West Corridor
The East-West Corridor (EWC) integrates the European CEF corridors North Sea – Baltic and North Sea – Mediterranean, including links to crossing North – South corridors. It runs from Ireland/UK via the Benelux, Northern France and Germany to Poland, the Baltic States and Southern Finland (and vice versa).
The East-West Corridor is a sub-activity of the European ITS Platform (www.its-platform.eu) and aims at the promotion of the use of harmonized ITS for an optimized utilization of the physical infrastructure on the East-West Corridor, including intermodal transport.
Needs for autonomic functions in road operators’ ITS. Good and bad practices from increasing the automation of road operators’ ITS – lessons learned – status update 2019
17/04/2020
The deliverable “Needs for autonomic functions in road operators’ ITS. Good and bad practices from increasing the automation of road operators’ ITS – lessons learned – status update 2019” is now available. The document is the 2019 update of the “Needs for autonomic functions in road operators’ ITS” and “Good and bad practices from increasing the automation of road operators’ ITS – Lessons learned” reports first delivered in 2017. It is based on the most recent developments in the partners’ countries and the feedback received from the stakeholder engagement activities carried out after the first edition was presented. The main objective of the report was to describe what autonomic functions could benefit road operators, in improving their operations, maintenance and provision of ITS services. The work was carried out using input from the participating partners in Finland, Germany – Hessen, Romania, Spain, and UK – Scotland.
The document gives you an overview on how major needs of road operators can be supported with autonomic functions of ITS systems, including the functional architecture for an autonomic TMC. Another important outcome of this report is a set of KPIs that can be used to measure the effects of introducing automation and autonomic functions. Also, targets for those KPIs are introduced for two foreseen time horizons: 2021 and 2030. Both the KPIs and their targets are not meant to impose any mandatory requirements on the implementers of TMCs, but rather they provide an expert advice on assessing the benefits and return of investment from introducing automation into daily operations.
Download the report here.
10/04/2020
In order to deal with recurrent congestion on motorway A25 when arriving in Lille, Dir Nord has decided to implement ramp metering in junction 8 combined with dynamic speed regulation over a length of 23km from Bailleul to Englos.
This project is part of the dynamic traffic management program on Lille Urban AreaN89) called Allegro.
The project is co-funded by the Ministry for the Ecological and Inclusive Transition and the European Union. Ramp metering has been commissioned in 2015, and dynamic speed regulation, which is functioning since 2016, will be extended in 2020 on the south ring road of Lille.
Variable speed limits and ramp metering on the access to the Bordeaux ring road
DIR Atlantique is implementing progressively a ramp-metering system in the Bordeaux ring-road. The main objective is to improve traffic flows on this road during peaks hours.
This project is part of the dynamic traffic management program of the Bordeaux ring-road and the main access roads to Bordeaux (A62, A63, A10, N89) called Alienor II. The project is co-funded by the Ministry for the Ecological and Inclusive Transition, the European Union, the Department of Gironde and Bordeaux Métropole.
Transport and "Green deal" – the European perspective
03/04/2020
"Green Deal" is the strategy that commits the EU to make the European economy neutral with regard to carbon by 2050. Transport is expected to make a significant contribution to achieving this goal of sustainability and safety. The innovations in the European institutions and the green deal are the subject of the editorial written by SINA for the issue 2/2020 of "Le Strade" magazine.
Please read the articleon the magazine’s website by following this link.
Summary of impacts, benefits and costs of highly automated driving – New deliverable online
31/03/2020
On March 17th the EU EIP Activity 4.2, Task 2 published “Summary of impacts, benefits and costs of highly automated driving”. The work for this report is carried out within EU EIP Activity 4.2, Task 2: Impacts and economic feasibility of automated driving aiming to identify and discuss the likely direct and indirect impacts of automated driving on mobility, traffic and the operations of road authorities and operators. The report took references from project inventory of latest relevant projects and studies like ERTRAC, CARTRE, MANTRA etc. as well as results from a workshop with representatives from Road operators and OEM’s. The report highlights impacts of automation of vehicles in 11 main areas namely; Traffic safety, Capacity & traffic flow, Parking, Public transport, Environment, Physical Infrastructure, Digital infrastructure, Planning, Active travel and health and Cyber security. The report further points out the cumulative benefits of automation of vehicles and the costs associated along with how these costs might be distributed among different actors. The report considers five major Connected Automated Vehicle (CAV) systems to understand and describe their impacts on society and the road operators. These CAV systems include; Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC), Truck platooning, Highway pilot, Automated shuttles, Automated valet parking (AVP) and Robo-taxi. The report concludes with some recommendations for the automated driving ecosystem, recommendations around need to promote pilots, need of infrastructure, data sharing and need of stakeholders pushing each other to progress together.
NEXT-ITS Newsletter Nr 2
The second newsletter of NEXT-ITS is now available.
UMneo – Minister of Transport Rheinland-Pfalz published federal state wide Digital Roadworks Information: a Milestone for digitalisation
16/03/2020
Picture: f.l.t.r. Stephanie Kleine, UMneo International Coordinator, Dr. Volker Wissing, Minister of Transport RP, Arno Trauden, Managing Director at Landesbetrieb Mobilität RP
Transport Minister Dr. Volker Wissing has activated "Baustelleninfo digital". All roadworks sites and diversions managed by the Rheinland-Pfalz road operator LBM are digitally recorded and published at www.verkehr.rlp.de. The data will be fed into the German National Access Point – the Mobility Data Marketplace (MDM) – and will be available there free of charge for navigation system manufacturers, other service providers or app developers.
"We are consistently pursuing the path of digitization in the transport sector," said Transport Minister Dr. Volker Wissing. "Digital solutions make traffic safer and smoother, they facilitate planning and coordination and help to avoid traffic jams. With ‘Baustelleninfo digital’ Rheinland-Pfalz has done pioneering work. For the first time, digital data for roadworks, including diversions on federal, state and district roads, is available throughout the whole state," says Wissing. "This is a milestone and unique in Germany”.
All nine regional offices of the LBM work with the new system. With digitally generated Traffic Regulation Orders of the roadworks at all regional LBM locations, the construction site data on location, duration and possible diversions are digitally recorded and made available using the DATEX II standard. The newly developed software for the digitalisation of roadworks is also available to all local authorities free of charge via a state license. Wissing encouraged local authorities to join the "Baustelleninfo digital" project, which would also greatly simplify coordination between the state and local authorities and make local authority roadworks information publicly available.
At the same time, he hoped that private data providers would also make use of the data promptly. "Roadworks and diversion data have not been available digitally until now. Here in Rheinland-Pfalz, we have launched a data treasure with which we can make traffic on the road even safer through information in navigation devices," Wissing said. In future, navigation system providers would have the option of feeding this data directly into their devices. Drivers would no longer be guided straight into roadworks but around them.
"For a safe and efficient traffic flow, which also benefits the environment, high-quality and up-to-date data is required," comments Michael Bültmann, Managing Director of HERE Technologies in Germany. "This increasingly includes data from vehicle sensors or other external sources, which we make available to our customers via the HERE platform. The result of the project BaustellenInfo digital RP of the Rheinland-Pfalz state government shows that the provision of data via the national mobility data marketplace MDM leads to a direct benefit for citizens. We have accompanied the project from the beginning and are currently using the data in a concrete project. The mobility of the future is only possible through open exchange and cooperation between companies, individuals and public institutions".
Save the date: Roadmap for Automated Driving – Virtual Workshop
06/03/2020
SA 4.2 Facilitating Automated Driving: Roadmap for Automated Driving – Virtual Workshop
Wednesday 30 September 2020 09.30 CET- 15.30 CET
Online Event
AIMS OF THE WORKSHOP
One of the most prominent developments in road transport is automation.
The introduction of automated functions in vehicles has already started. The number of equipped vehicles is expected to grow and there are promises that the functions will become more and more advanced.
Stakeholders need to consider their position on automation. What is their vision, what are their interests and options? What can and should they practically do to prepare?
The EU-EIP project considers these kind of questions from the point of view of road authorities and operators and is setting up a roadmap document. Other initiatives are asking these questions as well; this is a continuous effort since the field of automation is constantly evolving.
Our work, and this interactive event, will focus on the actions to be carried out by road authorities and operators to facilitate automated driving, especially during the next 10 years. The actions focus especially in the adaptations in physical and digital road infrastructures, and aiming for optimal benefit/cost of the actions.
A draft roadmap, written by the consortium and discussed with many stakeholders in the CCAM platform, will be available in advance of the workshop. We will use this workshop for final inputs to this document, and contribute to the continuing joined exploration towards clean, safe and efficient connected, cooperative and automated mobility.
OUTLINE AGENDA
09.30
Welcome, Roadmap overview and workshop format
11.00
Interactive session on priority actions for physical & digital infrastructure
12.00
Lunch break
13.00
Interactive session on priority actions for costs & benefits
14.15
Session wrap-up, discussion and reflections
15.30
End
TARGET AUDIENCE
European road operators and authorities.
The focus will be on highways but the broader scope will be included to some extent. Other stakeholders can contact us if they are interested to take part.
Contact: Maarten Amelink
Rijkswaterstaat presents first iRSU (movie)
05/03/2020
As part of the URSA MAJOR neo project Rijkswaterstaat tested eight intelligent RoadSide Units (iRSUs) in July 2018 in existing operational circumstances. In December 2018 another 20 iRSUs were installed to be used for the real-life pilot using floating car data instead of induction loops. Goal of the pilot was the application of this relatively new data source for ‘real time’ traffic management purposes (‘slow vehicle warning’). Rijkswaterstaat produced a short unconventional(!) movie to announce the development and installation of the first intelligent roadside unit. The movie can be seen at this link.
Cross Corridor Cooperation Workshop on Evaluation
25/02/2020
Members of the five ITS Corridors, EUEIP Activity 5 – Evaluation and other interested parties attended a two-day workshop in Paris to review and consider the future for evaluating the benefits derived from implementation of ITS and digital services on the road network.
The workshop came at an opportune time as DG-MOVE and INEA require a greater level of justification for co-funding ITS projects on the network. Our community has been challenged to provide information on the achievements and benefits of our projects throughout their programme, rather than in the final project reports.
The workshop held a series of sessions ranging from the benefits of a harmonised approach, a review of the current KPI’s, how C-ITS services are being evaluated and how to evaluate the impact of ITS in the context of a long distance ITS corridor. A session also looked at how the monetarise the beneficial impacts.
The goals of the event to facilitate cross corridor cooperation, assist EUEIP Activity 5, embed the importance of evaluating corridors using a harmonised approach amongst and across all corridors were achieved.
You can download the report on the proceedings by clicking here.
4th List of consolidated user requirements on data exchange
06/02/2020
Sub-Activity 4.5 partners participated to DG Updated processes by developing Guidance for creating DATEX II profiles by selecting in the model the minimum of classes and attributes allowing to guarantee the data exchanges among traffic managers and services operators compatible with the Directive action b requirements.
The 4th list of consolidated user requirements presents the results of the work performed in 2019 among actors allowing to prepare future work, to propose classes and attributes for the following Guidelines.
see Report “Liaison and harmonisation on interfaces for data exchange”
03/02/2020
Located at the heart of the motorway network near Namur, at the Daussoulx interchange, PEREX, the Walloon traffic centre manages and monitors traffic on motorways and the main Walloon roads, as well as the operation of electromechanical and telecommunications equipment. Most of the equipment, software, databases and applications were installed when it opened almost 20 years ago. Even if updates and adaptations were made over the years, the system no longer met current IT standards, which had repercussions on traffic management and mobility.
In addition to completely modernizing the equipment of the road traffic centre and that installed on the road network, it was decided to create a similar centre to ensure control and surveillance of the condition of the rivers and waterways network and its hydraulic works (locks, dams, elevators, …). This new centre for rivers will be an integral part of the PEREX 4.0 centre in Daussoulx. IT and electromechanical equipment will therefore be partly shared.
The platform report shows 2019 uptake of National Access Points: still work to be done!
27/01/2020
The Annual Report National Access Point 2019 has been published. In this article the highlights of the report are summarized. The full report (pdf) can be downloaded from the NAP achievement page
28 out of 29
NAP implementers
provided WG NAP survey feedback in 2019
Common Features & Level of Service
· NAP features are supported
· Two new 2019 features added & updated Support Document published
Metadata
· Coordinated Metadata Catalogue has been updated to consider MMTIS
· Continuing involvement in the NAP metadata conversation
Standards & common formats
· DATEX II – increasing implementation for NAP data exchange & progress towards v3
· Progressing MMTIS related standards and formats inc. SIRI, NeTEx, TAP- TSI, GTFS & GTFS-RT
MMTIS
· First steps are being taken for MMTIS NAPs – it is a challenging situation
· Links to EU projects are already addressing issues and looking for potential solutions
Architecture for NAPs
· Links with FRAME NEXT
· Significant progress made & working towards a FRAME NAP Architecture
Supporting the NAP / NB community
· Group of NAP operators and NB representatives created to enable best practice exchange & operational harmonisation
Declaration of Compliance
· NAP Declaration documents developed for STRI and RTTI are being used
· Declaration for Safe and Secure Truck Parking developed & published in 2019
Other relevant issues
· High Level Task Force: SRTI delivery Proof of Concept will inform Working Group NAP
· 2020 specific data element research will give additional hands-on insight into how NAPs are functioning
NAP Interactive Map
http://www.cestrin.ro/web2014/nap_eueip/
More info about the EU EIP NAP activity and it results on the achievement page
