ITS Observatory was present at the EU ITS Congress in Glasgow with a Special Interest Session focussed on business models and sustainability strategy for decision-support tools in the area of ITS.
The session started with a presentation of the global vision of the European Commission which is to encourage sustainable transport for people and goods. In this context the ITS Observatory will help highlighting the challenges for ITS deployment across Europe: what has been developed and where, what are the main challenges and obstacles for deployment?
University of Newcastle led a state-of-the art study to identify key success factors and lessons learnt from previous initiatives. The study detected existing decision-support tools and platforms for collaboration in complementary areas. Compared to current and previous initiatives the ITS Observatory follows a different innovative approach. The applied methodology is flexible and agile; user requirements are captured in the beginning of the project and collected during the development process in order to create the best final product. Two groups of users are identified – knowledge consumers and content providers, hence users will be invited to enter and publish their own information.
The European ITS Platform (EIP) is a platform for collaboration where many synergies have been identified with the Observatory. The EIP was created to build a network of ITS road operators and public authorities, and to provide guidelines. From EIP‘s perspective a tool such as the Observatory will be beneficial in the aspect of creating and maintaining a strong network and community of ITS experts.
The SEE-ITS project aims to establish cooperation for ITS deployment in the South-Eastern Europe. The potential collaboration with the Observatory is seen in the aspect of identifying who to contact, obtaining summarised best practice across Europe, and having quick access to links to other sources of information. The Observatory will be useful in facilitating knowledge exchange and bringing together experts from different regions and ITS areas. In a long term it can help facilitating harmonisation in terms of systems and deployment.
DITCM is a local innovative initiative set up in the Netherlands to share frameworks and to learn from each other’s’ experience in order to avoid reinventing the wheel. Knowing what the benefits are and having a shared framework for deployment is one of the main objectives of DITCM. The most appreciated features in the ITS Observatory are the access to a catalogue of professionals, a library of documents, results and deliverables. DITCM understands and supports the importance of the European level when it comes to ITS Deployment and strongly encourages the ITS Observatory initiative.
Finally, the presentation of the current status of the work on the sustainability strategy showed the method applied in defining the most suitable business model for the ITS Observatory. It was highlighted that the Observatory is not conceived to become commercial tool, but the information will be solution-oriented and presented in a neutral way to be beneficial to all segments of the ITS Community.
How to make the Observatory useful according to the speakers:
- Understand the audience, have the right questions, use the right language
- Show what are the solutions, where are they implemented, propose clear starting point towards the action
- Building trust, less time consuming, useful
- Knowledge, results, exchange on high level
- Companies communicating with each other, focus on solutions and rather than technologies
- One stop shop, links to other initiatives
- Combination of all the above mentioned – trust, discussion in secure environment
Pictures from the ITS Observatory SIS20 at Glasgow Congress
ITS Observatory stand at the Glasgow Congress featuring the pre-launch version of the platform
