The International Programme Committee meets in Bordeaux

The Call for Papers and Special Interest Session proposals is now closed. We received 191 Special Interest Session proposals and more than 900 papers from Europe, Africa and Middle East, Asia-Pacific and the Americas.

Thanks to all who submitted their contribution for the ITS World Congress Bordeaux 2015!

The weeks to come will be challenging for the International Programme Committee and the reviewers as they begin to evaluate the submissions. The selection process is currently ongoing and we would like to thank the reviewers that volunteered to evaluate the papers submitted. Due to the high volume of submissions, presentation slots are extremely competitive.

The International Programme Committee met last week in Bordeaux to continue shaping the programme for the Congress and we asked two of its European members, Roger Pagny from the French Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy and Ashweeni Beeharee from Satellite Applications Catapult to tell us more about Topic 1 – Space technologies and services for ITS.

Focus on Topic 1 – Space technologies and services for ITS – Q&A

  • What do you mean by ‘space technologies’?
    In the context of the ITS, the key areas of space technologies are – satellite communication, earth observation and the well-known GNSS positioning/timing. These satellite services are available all around the earth and can support continuity and interoperability for many applications.
  • Will space technology replace existing technologies?
    Like all technologies, space technology has its strength and limitations. When used in combination with its terrestrial counterparts, the resulting technology can deliver exciting capabilities for ITS. Higher level of communication coverage, availability and resilience can be achieved by hybrid communications systems (terrestrial and satellite) to support connectivity for vehicles, infrastructure and associated services. In a similar way, higher precision and availability for vehicular positioning is achievable by using multi-constellation satellite and terrestrial positioning technologies. The fusion of earth observation and terrestrial sensor data provides a much-richer and complete story about environmental monitoring, transport networks, traffic flows and infrastructure. Therefore, space technology enhances – and does not replace – the capabilities afforded by terrestrial technologies in ITS.
  • Is satellite communication too costly to be usable for ITS?
    Satellite communication exist in many flavours – of which broadcasting, messaging and bi-directional communication are the most relevant to ITS. Through broadcasting, substantial (or small) amount of data can be concurrently sent to a large geographical footprint and to any number of vehicles within that area. This is by far most cost effective and much cheaper than any currently deployed wireless terrestrial system to deliver such content. Messaging allows vehicles to send short small-burst messages to the infrastructure – with cost comparable to cellular SMS messages. Finally, cost of bi-directional communication depends on the amount of data exchanged – while it can be costly in some cases, it provides critical connectivity in utmost urgency – such as for an emergency call from a passenger coach on a treacherous mountain road.
    In remote places, satellite communications are sometimes the only mean to connect a road side equipment to a control centure. Having only one service provider can save costs of roaming communications between many countries.
  • Why has adoption of space technologies – other than GNSS – been slow in ITS?
    The expertise and exploitation of space technologies has generally been confined to specific application areas. GNSS is a great example of a technology targeting military applications finding its way into the civilian space. Other space technologies – communications and earth observation – are not fully understood by the ITS community, and similarly the space sector has not fully explored the market potential of ITS applications. In addition, the lack of mass-market demand for such technologies has kept the associated costs of exploitation high.

 

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