On Wednesday 14 and Thursday 15 February, the architecture teams of the European funded C-Mobile project and representatives of the US Department of Transport (US DOT) came together to compare and where possible harmonize their Connected Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) architectures. The two-day workshop was organized in the RACC offices in Barcelona, Spain.
A key aspect of the C-Mobile Project addresses the large-scale deployment of mobility services in eight European cities. As such, the project is integrating ITS architecture components developed and identified by several European organizations and projects into a European reference architecture. The two-day workshop was well attended by the partners involved in the C-Mobile architecture activity. The US delegation consisted of Mr Steve Still, Acting Team Leader of the Federal Highway Administration of the US DOT, and Mr. Tom Lusco of the company Iteris. Iteris provides consulting services to the US DOT on Connected and Automated Driving.
After a warm welcome given by Marcos Pillado of IDIADA, an introduction presentation was given by C-Mobile partner Priyanka Karkhanis of RACC. Priyanka gave some insights in the different architecture exercises currently running in Europe. Projects and initiatives such as CONVERGE, MOBiNET, The Dutch ITS Architecture, Compass4D, SCOOP@F, NordicWay and the US ITS architecture contributed to the Reference Architecture compiled by C-Mobile. This Reference Architecture is documented by means of eight different RM-ODP viewpoints, each of which provides a perspective on the architecture from a different angle. The documentation uses standardized UML and SysML diagrams to represent the architecture.
Before lunch Dr. Jaap Vreeswijk of TNO introduced an overview of the different European C-ITS endeavours and projects, past and present. Special attention was given to the running platforms and efforts such as C-Roads and the Netherlands-Germany-Austria Corridor. The presentation gave a detailed insight to the different components currently identified as a part of the European Reference Infrastructure.
After lunch the US DOT’s Steve Sill and Iteris’ Tom Lusco introduced the American C-ITS infrastructure. This architecture, known as the Architecture Reference for Cooperative and Intelligent Transportation (ARC-IT) version 8.1 is following the guidelines published by the American National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Its approach is similar to that in use in Europe, but describes the architecture through only four viewpoints: The Enterprise, Functional, Physical and Communications view. Next to the actual architectures definition, two ARC-IT companion tools are currently developed: RAD-IT and SET-IT. These tools allow project architects to extract from the overall ARC-IT architecture to regional and service specific architectures. The tools are free of charge and can be downloaded from the ARC-IT website (https://local.iteris.com/arc-it/index.html).
Participants to the workshop were relieved to hear that many components and concepts identified in the US ITS Architecture could almost be translated word-for-word into the European Reference Architecture. For example, the American ITS Communication model uses technologies such WAVE (Wireless Access in Vehicle Environments), a standard based on the IEEE exertions IEEE802.11p, which also serves as the base for ETSI ITS-G5. It was noted in the conclusions that the conceptual architectures are identical, with their structure based on ISO 4210. As a result, US Services can be simply carried over into a European Equivalent at up to 95%.
The second day of the workshop focused on the services used by the different C-MobILE pilot sites and the architecture components necessary to deliver these services. The US C-ITS expertise and experience was widely appreciated during the discussions, and contributed to a better definition of the different services due to be deployed in the pilot cities. Discussion also broached on other topics such as Geo-Messaging, Security and Certification mechanisms, Time synchronization, Business Models, and more.
This twinning workshop was appreciated not only for its immediate benefits, but also because of the growing need to ensure interoperability between the European and US C-ITS architectures. Europe will have a closer look at the tools proposed by ARC-IT, and a task force was set up to investigate the use of the European Reference Architecture as a basis for the RAD-IT and SET-IT tools. A follow-up workshop is already proving necessary, and will be planned in the future. In the meanwhile, decisions were made to keep an open communication channel between the C-MobILE partners and the US Department of Transportation.
More information about ARC-IT 8.9 can be found on the following website: https://local.iteris.com/arc-it/index.html
For more details about the C-Mobile project please visit: http://c-mobile-project.eu/
