The fourth eCall TESTFEST event, organised by ERTICO – ITS Europe and ETSI, and hosted by Vítkovice IT SOLUTIONS a.s., was held in Ostrava, Czech Republic, from 9 to 13 November 2015. New In Vehicle System (IVS) and Public Safety Answering Points (PSAP) vendors joined the event, increasing the team of vendors from all over the world who have been regularly attending the eCall TESTFEST events since 2012. While carrying out thousands of tests, participants had the opportunity to test compliancy, interoperability and essential performance of their eCall implementations.
The fourth TESTFEST event was supported by The Ministry of Transport, Ministry of Interior, Fire Rescue Service of the Czech Republic and Vodafone, The European Commission and the iMobility Forum. The event proved to be an important one, not only due to its large attendance, but also because new test tools allowed for instance eCall High Level Application (HLAP) compliancy, GNSS performance and speech quality testing. Representing three continents, from small enterprises to global corporations, research institutes and national ministries, the world of eCall engineering was represented at this TESTFEST. During the five days of the event, hundreds of pairing sessions were organised. Each session, lasting two hours, allowed one IVS unit to test with one PSAP unit or against a rich choice of dedicated test benches. This set-up, combined with the collaboration between parties, allowed engineers to evaluate the compliancy and interoperability of their implementation, and, as applicable, fine-tune their software. After each day of testing, a briefing enabled all participants to share their feedback and discuss the eCall standards with the supporting experts.
Considering the obvious and natural imbalance between IVS and PSAP systems vendors, the event was made possible thanks to the special commitment from PSAP suppliers and operators. They participated either directly in the TESTFEST or remotely as real operators in Germany, Luxemburg and Spain were allowed to answer test eCalls. Test solutions, for compliancy and performance testing, were also available for the IVS units, providing a broad range of validation scenarios.
Test results were reported by vendors using the ETSI test reporting tool, allowing assessing the level of interoperability either by test categories or across all vendors.
eCall Workshop
The eCall Workshop, held at the same premises on 11 November 2015, provided an opportunity for local stakeholders as well as eCall experts to get insights into the eCall application and technology. The particular challenge of ensuring interoperability and solving the remaining technical issues for deploying eCall were discussed with the experts from the TESTFEST and in particular with the actors from the Czech Republic, where eCall is deployed and available now. Workshop participants were given the opportunity to visit the TESTFEST and understand first-hand the benefits of the interoperability testing.
eCall is an in-vehicle road safety system which automatically calls the emergency services in case of a serious accident. As soon as the eCall sensors register a severe impact on a vehicle or a call is initiated manually, the system automatically dials the pan European 112 emergency voice call number and calls the relevant Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP). In April 2015, the European Parliament made it mandatory for all new models of cars to be equipped with eCall technology from 31 March 2018 onward.
Notes to the editor
About ERTICO – ITS Europe
ERTICO – ITS Europe is a multi-sector, public/private partnership pursuing the development and deployment of Intelligent Transport Systems and Services (ITS). We connect public authorities, industry players, infrastructure operators, users, national ITS associations and other organisations together and work to bring “Intelligence into Mobility”.
For more information, visit the website: www.ertico.com.About ETSIETSI, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, produces globally-applicable standards for Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), including fixed, mobile, radio, aeronautical, broadcast and internet technologies and is officially recognized by the European Union as a European Standards Organization. ETSI is a not-for-profit organization with more than 800 member organizations, drawn from 64 countries across 5 continents, which determine its work programme and participate directly in its work. For more information please visit: www.etsi.org.ETSI Plugtests is a professional unit of ETSI specialising in running interoperability test events for a wide range of telecommunications, Internet, broadcasting and multimedia converging standards. For more information, please visit: www.etsi.org/plugtests
About VITKOVICE
VÍTKOVICE MACHINERY GROUP is one of the largest engineering groups . It builds on almost two centuries of know-how and doing business in an industry which has been accompanying civilisation and driving its development since the beginning. The group has expanded to almost all fields of human activities and was present at the birth of the third largest city in the Czech Republic. Thus, it has been an active participant of evolution – METAL EVOLUTION.
The Forum currently has 9 active working groups (Automation WG, Probe data WG, Safe Apps WG, HMI WG, Legal Issues WG, Research and Innovation WG, Implementation Road maps WG, International Cooperation WG and Vulnerable road users WG). The iMobility Forum WGs have developed and are continuously refining recommendations for work items especially in the context of future R&D work to support the deployment of ITS.About eCall
eCall is an electronic road safety system which automatically calls the emergency services in case of a serious accident, even if the driver and passengers are unconscious. As soon as the eCall sensors register a severe impact on the car during an accident, it automatically dials 112 emergency and calls to the nearest emergency centre. The call transmits the exact geographic location of the accident scene and other data. eCalls can also be made manually by car occupants, thus enabling them to provide the call centre with additional details of the accident. After 31 March 2018, all cars and light trucks in the 28 EU Member States will be mandated to be fitted with eCall based on 112.
Getting immediate information about an accident and pinpointing the exact location of the crash site cut emergency services’ response time by 50% in rural and 40% in urban areas. Thanks to this gain in time, eCall is expected to save several hundred lives in the European Union each year, and to mitigate the severity of tens of thousands of injuries. Road accidents cost the EU around €160 billion and the mandatory deployment of eCall in Europe after 31 March 2018 is expected to save up to €20 billion annually. eCall will work all over the European Union, plus Iceland, Norway and Switzerland. The Russian Federation is developing a similar accident notification system called ERA GLONASS. It is based on the eCall standards. Both sides, the EU and Russia, are working together in order to make eCall and ERA GLONASS interoperable so that eCall will also work in Russia and ERA GLONASS in the EU.
