by Carla Coppola
After our in-depth review of what was a very exciting 2012 this month we take a glimpse at 2013 and we can say without doubt that 2013 couldn’t start better!
Three major projects Compass4DMOBiNET and HeERO2 kicked-off in January and you can be sure that you will hear more about them in the next years.
With 31 partners and 7 pilot cities Compass4D is hoping to deploy cooperative services that will make mobility in cities safer and greener. The particularity of Compass4D is that different means of transport will be involved; not only private cars but also buses taxis and emergency vehicles will undergo the testing in these 7 very different cities (Bordeaux Copenhagen Eindhoven-Helmond Newcastle Thessaloniki Verona and Vigo). The kick-off took place in Vigo Spain; the meetings and media encounters will then move to Copenhagen at the end of April and so forth for the next three years until the final event in Bordeaux in 2015 during the ITS World Congress.
With its eye on the future of transport and mobility MOBiNET has the ambitious goal of developing and deploying a Europe-wide cloud platform for ITS services. With a bulky budget of 15.6 million Euros this 44-month project will provide tools for developers of next-generation mobility “apps” for users as well as business enablers for providers of all types of mobility services and content. MOBiNET features include single user identity and mobility services account; Europe-wide virtual transport ticketing; business-to-business directory of European services and content and E-marketplace; and a MOBiNET “app-store” and user interface.
2013 Spring and Autumn seasons will be sparkling with ITS. After the outstanding exhibition and programme presented in Vienna last year ERTICO is working on two major ITS events: the 9th ITS European Congress in Dublin and the 20th ITS World Congress in Tokyo.
In Europe with the call for papers is now closed with over 300 papers submitted ( good luck to the reviewers) and with the registrations to be opened at the beginning of March it is easy to imagine how busy ERTICO Congress team is. The exhibition will be up and running at the Convention Centre Dublin (CCD) in the heart of Dublin City on 4 June for four full days with hundreds of sessions carefully selected to appeal all the ITS heads participating in the event.
Following Dublin we travel to Tokyo where the Japanese hosts are putting all their efforts to guarantee a spectacular event in the Tokyo Big Sight one of the largest convention venues of the city. As the 20th ITS World Congress will take place from 14 to 18 October attendees still have a few more months before they are stunned by the excellence of Japanese transport systems.
On the activities side energy efficiency and reduction of carbon emissions is becoming a central issue amongst Member States as the focus on several projects is testifying. The ECOeffect training programme has started its second demo-tour around Poland Romania and Czech Republic to support truck drivers in finding a more efficient way to drive and save fuel. The third demo tour will coincide with a big final event in September where public authorities will be invited to discuss and touch with hands the eco-driving benefits.
Another two EU funded projects COSMO and Ecomove will conclude their activities in 2013 with two final events respectively in May and November. In the past 2 and half years COSMO looked at demonstrating the benefits of cooperative services in realistic conditions by quantifying the effect of different traffic management systems – for example multimodal real-time travel information systems – on fuel consumption and traffic emissions.
Along the same lines eCoMove focused its research on vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication technologies to create concrete solutions such as eco-driving support and eco-traffic management to reduce energy consumption for passengers and goods vehicles. The project results will be presented in Aachen Germany during the project’s final event on 20 and 21 November.
eCall is still considered one of the most EU high profile projects and it will remain a central issue after 2015 when all new European vehicles will be equipped with the emergency call service. The pilot projects implementing the service HeERO 1 and HeERO 2 will run in parallel throughout the year until the 2nd International HeERO Conference in Bucharest in November which will mark the end of HeERO1 and unveil the final results. This conference will also be an occasion for interested stakeholders to discuss HeERO 2 preliminary results in the 6 new test sites in Belgium Bulgaria Denmark Luxembourg Spain and Turkey and to participate in demonstrations on how eCall is activated and received by the system in the national protection and rescue offices.
Part of the ERTICO activities involves studies on driver behaviour and their impact of road safety. In June 2012 the EuroFOT project concluded that driver assistance technologies might have a positive effect on the driver behaviour and as consequence on road safety traffic efficiency and environment. This year we carry on the research on large-scale naturalistic driving studies (NDS) and field operation tests (FOT) with two projects UDRIVE and FOT-Net . Between February and October several workshops will be organised in Brussels and elsewhere to look deeply into these studies and their possible benefits.
Another initiative the coordinated and supported action (CSA) 79GHz has set up ambitious objectives for 2013. The project will look at speeding-up worldwide harmonised frequency allocations for vehicular radars in the 77 GHz to 81 GHz (79GHz) frequency range while focusing on different countries in Asia (Japan India China) and Americas (USA Canada Brazil). For technical reasons the frequency range between 77 and 81 GHz provides an exceptional performance for the Short Range Radar (SRR) used for different applications. Considering that European vehicle manufacturers and their suppliers make business at a global level 79GHz project will provide a wide range of benefits by avoiding the segmentation of the overall market by region specific frequency variants that increases the cost of production and reduces competitiveness. Also 79GHz will focus on the recently founded “IARREG – International Automotive Radio Regulations Expert Group” promoting the interests of the worldwide automotive industry concerning regulatory issues on radio based automotive systems and components; the use of the appropriate harmonised frequency bands for radio based automotive application within the existing and future regulatory environment; the maintenance of appropriate existing frequency bands.
To sum up new projects new policies designed for citizens’ safety and environment protection new business models knocking on the door with international cooperation remaining a central focus for ERTICO. What has been mentioned so far represents only few of the planned activities of the ERTICO partnership for 2013. Even if this year we will have one day less (2012 was a leap year in case you were wondering why you were so tired in December) we are convinced that it will be a great year for Intelligent Transport Systems. Be ready for the ride.
Link to original Article
http://www.ertico.com/2013-is-looking-better-than-ever/
Original Publication Date: Wed 17 Oct 2012
