Overview
Being a part of Intelligent Transport Systems, cooperative ITS (C-ITS or cooperative systems) encompass a group of technologies and applications that allow effective data exchange through wireless communication technologies between components and actors of the transport system, very often between vehicles (vehicle-to-vehicle or V2V) or between vehicles and infrastructure (vehicle-to-infrastructure or V2I).
The deployment of C-ITS is an evolutionary process that will start with the less complex use cases. These are referred to as “Day-1-services”, encompassing messages about traffic jams, hazardous locations, road-works and slow or stationary vehicles, as well as weather information and speed advice to harmonise traffic. Using probe vehicle and infrastructure-related data, all C-ITS services shall be transmitted directly into the vehicles in a way that allows users to get informed but not distracted.
The deployment of C-ITS faces many important issues still unresolved, such as legal, organisational, administrative, governing aspects, technical and standardisation issues as well as implementation and procurement issues.
C-Roads is a platform of Member States working on the deployment of harmonised and interoperable C-ITS services in Europe.
The C-Roads Platform approach will pursue cooperation on a holistic level in order to cover all dimensions linked with the deployment of C-ITS, such as sharing experiences and knowledge regarding deployment and implementation issues, as well as user acceptance. It will follow a bottom-up approach that will include national pilots. These will form basic elements for a later pan-European C-ITS implementation. The national pilot initiatives will move on to cross-site testing which will allow them to grow together and achieve transnational interoperability. In this way C-Roads will ensure European cohesion of C-ITS deployment in the European Union with regards to a long-term roll-out.
The C-Roads Belgium/Flanders project encompasses both an active participation in and contribution to the “C Roads Platform” and a ‘national’ large-scale C-ITS pilot building on a cloud-based Service Management and Delivery system enabling provision of safety-related C-ITS services to road users. At the test site, existing cellular based 3G-4G/LTE mobile communication networks will be used in combination with the HERE Location Cloud and the local Traffic Management Centre, which will allow a group of approximately 1000 test drivers to receive and potentially update selected Safety Related Traffic Information (SRTI) using low latency data exchange, in line with the European Commission Delegated Regulation 886/2013 and the final report (phase I) of the EU C-ITS platform. The Safety Related Traffic Information deployed will focus specifically on Day 1 and 1.5 Services.
The C-Roads Belgium/Flanders pilot will focus on at least the following four C-ITS services:
- Slow or stationary vehicle(s)
- Traffic jam ahead warning
- Road works warning
- Shockwave damping
The main objective of the C-Roads Flemish pilot is to pilot and assess the deployment of a cloud based solution for C- ITS services to connect road users with the Traffic Management Centre (TMC) and allowing the TMC to directly interact with the end users. The pilot will also allow the opportunity to upgrade Traffic Information Services and Traffic Management Services offered today, building on a digital ‘virtual infrastructure’.
The main focus of the evaluation/ assessment will be on the impacts obtained from an end-user perspective and on the organisational and business-related aspects of the approach followed. Furthermore, aspects related to a safe HMI and the Level Of Service (~ quality) of new safety related services that can be obtained will be assessed.