As the year comes to an end, all of us here at ERTICO would like to sincerely thank all our readers for their collaboration throughout 2017. This was a special year for ERTICO: we celebrated 25 years of working together to promote and deploy intelligent transport in Europe.
Our efforts this year have covered four main areas of work: Connected & Automated Driving, Clean Mobility, Urban Mobility, and Transport & Logistics. Through these, ERTICO ensures that its work concentrates on ITS deployment priorities.
In the field of Connected and Automated Driving, ERTICO paves the way for C-ITS and the necessary evolution of road infrastructure that will support the deployment of automated vehicles in the future.
In the context of car connectivity, ERTICO played a key role in the delivery of common upgraded specifications for ITS-G5 communications to the C-Roads platform, as part of the InterCor project running in four EU Member States: Belgium, France, Netherlands and the United Kingdom. These specifications underwent validation at a TESTFEST event, and are expected to achieve harmonisation in this field at European level.
ERTICO is committed to continue playing a key role in shaping policy for connected and automated driving. In this context, ERTICO co-chaired the Working Group on Regulation for Connected and Automated Driving in European Commission’s GEAR2030 and contributed to its final publication, the “High Level Group GEAR 2030 report on automotive competitiveness and sustainability”.
Throughout the year we kept on developing solutions to make mobility greener and sustainable while helping address the transport goals of public authorities and infrastructure operators. In this context, our Innovation Platform eMI3 developed use cases of smart charging and electric roaming, which should be released in the first quarter of 2018. Outputs from eMI3 are fed into the NeMo project, contributing to the creation of a common information model for the future hyper-network for electro mobility. NeMo will be key to providing pan-European roaming for electric vehicle users and ERTICO is proud to be part of this initiative.
The MaaS Alliance recently published recommendations and guidelines on how to build a thriving ecosystem for Mobility as a Service, and is expected to focus on building a strong ecosystem for real-life deployment of this concept.
2017 also saw the launch of the C-MobILE project which already defined the needs and requirements for large-scale deployment of C-ITS services in complex urban areas, involving public authorities and different groups of road users.
ERTICO is working to overcome the existing fragmentation within the freight and logistics mobility area by developing a solution for connecting logistics systems for immediate exchange of information. In this context, the AEOLIX project is building a cloud-based, multi-enterprise “many-to-many” network platform which will connect an unlimited number of supply chain partners and will give the overview of the entire supply chain in real time.
Throughout the second half of the year, ERTICO coordinated I_HeERO project completed the upgrade of Public Safety Answering Points (PSAP) in eleven European countries in preparation for the introduction of eCall capabilities on all new vehicles starting in March 2018, while developing burgeoning eCall solutions for powered two-wheelers, trucks and coaches.
Last but not least, ERTICO organised some major events including the 12th ITS European Congress, held in Strasbourg in June, which attracted a record 2,500 participants. During this event, the second Mayor’s Summit gathered 23 cities to discuss low emission zones in cities, innovative solutions for urban logistics, and automated public transport.
In September, ERTICO celebrated 25 years of innovation by hosting a Think Tank event in Brussels, attracting more than 120 attendees from 60 Partner organisations, and focusing on ERTICO Partnership’s Vision 2030 for mobility.
2017 was also a year of increased international cooperation: ERTICO strengthened links with its counterparts in China, and signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the China ITS Industry Alliance to cooperate in the field of ITS research & development and encourage knowledge exchange.
All these achievements are first and foremost ERTICO Partners’ achievements; and we are proud to represent 121 companies and organisations from the public and private fields hailing from all the industry sectors needed to move intelligent transport forward. It is a great pleasure for me to chair this umbrella organisation, and would like to extend my gratitude to the management and the team behind this success.
2017 was an intense and a great year for ERTICO, and I look forward to an even more successful 2018.
By Cees de Wijs, Chairman of ERTICO – ITS Europe
