Overview
The purpose of a national architecture for ITS is to provide guidelines for the planning, design or implementation of an ITS application. ITS architectures come in different forms and levels ranging from specific structures, such as the layout of a communication system or the design principles for an individual ITS element, to high-level concepts representing the underlying framework of a whole project.
Many European countries had developed or are currently developing a national ITS architecture, following on the achievement of the European Framework Architecture for ITS (www.frame-online.net). This relates to road transport systems and services, with links to other modes where appropriate. As in other countries, Romania needed a national ITS architecture according to European norms, in order to secure a proper development of ITS on its road network.
The main project objectives were:
- the development of an ITS research network connected to similar European and global networks;
- the elaboration of an ITS Architecture National Framework
- the development of a software toolset for supporting ITS development and making a functional model useful for upgrading software instruments and embedding the ITS Architecture.
The project also aimed at creating a private access website for the network members, and a public website for potential users of the ITS architecture frame and software tools.
The project was sustained by the FRAME project and other national initiatives like TTS Austria. Moreover, every ITS National Association European platform member supported ITS Romania and its partners in running this project.
The main technical tasks were:
- project management and management data dissemination
- analyses, studies, users demands
- ITS architecture
- software tools
- functional model. Test and validate
- project information dissemination.
The ITS Architecture National Framework was defined by a set of documents containing the description of the architecture components and several studies: global, European and national ITS level studies, user requirements, functional architecture, physical and communications architecture, security and structural architecture, costs, benefits and risks studies.
All these studies fed into the development of two software instruments which are necessary in specific system ITS architecture components formation. The first software instrument was used for ITS system functional architecture development and the other one to develop the physical and communication architecture development. A functional model was also produced for testing and validating the software instruments already generated.
Funding
Results
The project had a high technical impact in terms of ITS framework development.
ITS developing methods and instruments setting based on ITS architecture was another technical impact component.
The research network provided a high level information useful to potential users, being also an important economical source. Using the framework architecture, little and medium enterprises can now access the market (technical system specifications will be created based on project developed framework architecture).