In today’s national economies, the smooth, safe and efficient transportation of people and goods are fundamental objectives of their transport policies. In Europe this is being actively promoted by the European Commission through the ITS Action Plan and ITS Directive and the deployment of cooperative systems.
Similar initiatives are being promoted in the United States through its IntellidriveSM programme, and there are similar initiatives in Japan and other countries around the world. Failure to achieve these objectives is now recognised as a threat to economic growth, competitiveness, security, and is an unsustainable use of the transport network.
Most ITS deployments include the provision of services that support the achievement of these objectives. These services must usually be available everywhere, all of the time and be accessed by end users in a consistent way, regardless of geographic influences, national boundaries and the mode of transport being used. The delivery of these services requires an increasingly large number of applications as part of an integrated system. Often these applications may be owned and operated by differing organizations that may not be used to working together.
Providing a strategic framework
To provide the maximum benefit, these applications must be well planned and fully compatible. This means that their design, implementation and integration must be based on a strategic framework. Such a framework can be provided through the creation of a system architecture for ITS (often called an ITS architecture), which can provide a strategic overview and planning tool for ITS deployment and an overview of what the services will do without looking at their provision, i.e. what stakeholders want, rather then the technology involved. ITS architectures also offer a way to look at the interfaces across physical boundaries and the use and storage of data. They provide a platform for the exploration of subjects such as application deployment, communications requirements, risk analysis and organizational issues, plus support for effective procurement by identifying when components are needed and enabling cost forecasts to be produced for ITS planning.
Stakeholders must be involved in service definitions so that they can see for themselves the benefits of ITS. It will encourage stakeholder ‘buy-in’ and their active promotion of the widespread use of the ITS. In order to achieve maximum benefit, the strategic framework, or ITS architecture, needs to be created before any design work has been started. This enables all of the issues to be explored and any changes made at a fraction of the cost that would be involved if this is done later as the design, integration, deployment and system testing progresses.
Benefits provided by ITS architecture
ITS architecture creation and usage offers a number of benefits. It ensures an open market for services and equipment, because there ‘standard’ interfaces can be defined between components. An open market permits economies of scale in production and distribution and it ensures consistency of information that is delivered to end-users. It also encourages investment in ITS because compatibility is ensured and guarantees component inter-operability, even when they are produced by different manufacturers. Additionally ITS architectures enable system specifications to be technology independent and new technologies to be incorporated easily. They also provide a common understanding of the purpose and functions of the ITS deployment, thereby avoiding conflicting assumptions.
ITS architectures provide a systematic mechanism for capturing the objectives and requirements of those involved, e.g. public authorities, transport operators, ITS producers, or final users. It therefore facilitates clear discussion between them and gives valuable support to decision-makers.
Siemens expertise
ITS architectures have been under development in various part of the world for over fifteen years. Siemens was a leading participant in the creation of the first of these, the US National ITS Architecture released in June 1996. Since then Siemens has been a main participant in the development, support and promotion of the European ITS Framework Architecture – often called the "FRAME Architecture". As part of this work, Siemens has acted as an architecture consultant to European projects and national ITS initiatives in several countries. It has also been involved in other European projects, including UTMC and public transport in the UK. With this unique and unrivalled expertise, Siemens is able to use ITS architectures to plan ITS deployments for any organization, both in the UK and around the world.