EU-funded Project EDITS launched in Vienna
The project EDITS (European Digital Traffic Infrastructure Network for Intelligent Transport Systems) aims at enhancing the mobility of Central European citizens by providing interoperable and multimodal traveller information services based on a harmonised platform for data and information exchange.
EDITS is implemented through the CENTRAL EUROPE Programme co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). The project embraces 13 partners from five countries (Austria Czech Republic Hungary Italy Slovakia) and is coordinated by Austri-aTech in its role as lead partner (an agency of the Austrian Federal Ministry for Transport In-novation and Technology). The kick-off meeting of the EDITS-Project took place in Vienna on 4th of October 2012. The total budget amounts to € 2.42 Million and will last for 30 months until December 2014.
Interfaces across national boundaries
EDITS works on improving existing traveller information services as well as setting up traffic management solutions. Central part in EDITS is the adoption of a specified EDITS Graph In-tegration Platform (EDITS-GIP) and commonly agreed EDITS-GIP-Interface to allow the ex-change of traffic related information among regions. By providing quality services of this kind – covering different modes of transport as well as regions – the mobility behaviour of the single traveller will be improved.
The EDITS partners decided to take up the challenge of providing multimodal traveller and traffic information and reliable data to end-users in order to overcome existing problems such as congestion and bottlenecks in the cross border area to foster multimodal chains to facilitate the cross border exchange of information and bridge the gap between the fragmented national and regional systems.
International interest on cross border solutions
The topic of the EDITS project was also discussed during the ITS World Congress 2012 in Vienna from 22nd to 26th of October 2012 where the ITS community gathered to discuss the latest trends and policies in Intelligent Transport Systems. Within a special interest session national and regional approaches to provide and exchange accurate public data for digital maps to improve traveller information services have been discussed by EDITS partners as well as international experts.
Despite the fact that the project has started only recently it was inserted within the Action Plan accompanying the European Union’s Strategy for the Danube Region (Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament the Council the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions SEC (2010) 1489 final) where one of the key actions in priority area 1 (to improve mobility and multimodality) is focusing on the deployment of multimodal services. EDITS will be one of the flagship initiatives that will provide improved traveller and traffic information and will allow for a more efficient management and use of the existing transport infrastructure.
Links
Contact for more information:
Martin Böhm martin.boehm@austriatech.at
AustriaTech – Federal Agency for Technological Measures Ltd.
T: +43 1 26 33 444; F: +43 1 26 33 444 10
Ana Sinkovic sinkovic@cei.int
Central European Initiative – Executive Secretariat
T: +39-040-7786758
Link to original Article
http://www.ertico.com/increasing-cross-border-mobility-in-central-europe/
Original Publication Date: Thu 31 Jan 2013
