| Vol.4 |
Report on "19th ITS World Congress Vienna 2012" |
ITS Technology Stepping from the Development Phase in the Lab to the Street
The Latest Version of UC-Win/Road Attracts Attention
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The 19th ITS World Congress, in which FORUM8 took part in, was held from
22 to 26 October 2012 at Messezentrum Wien Exhibition & Congress Center
in Vienna, Austria.
According to the official Website of the Congress (English) (http://2012.itsworldcongress.com/content/), Doris Bures, Austrian Minister for Transport, Innovation and Technology
(BMVIT), summarizes that the ITS Vienna 2012 ultimately marks the evolvement
from a purely scientific congress into an event that shows actual products
and renders the benefits of new developments visible. In his words, the
development phase of new traffic technologies is finished and they are
about to make the step from the laboratory to the street.
More than 10,000 participants from 90 countries in this congress set a new record in the number of visitors. 2,000 people attended the Opening Ceremony on the first day of the congress for only 1,600 seats, showing it was already successful. Among all congress participants were 2,090 women, which amounted to 21 percent. About 2,400 visitors attended on the Public Day (October 26). Over 900 children and adolescents joined the guided tours across the congress venue to develop their interest in the related technologies through the exhibition and demonstration, indicating the steady spread of understanding of ITS.
One of the features of this congress is that Austrian companies contributed to 15 projects of the demo programs. Of 23 technical demonstrations overall, eight took place in the actual traffic of Vienna. This is considered acceptance of ITS being ready for deployment.
The exhibition by over 300 companies and ventures from 25 nations effectively displayed their visions about future mobility. The exhibition attracted more than 4,500 visitors, who contacted with diversified activities on ITS. FORUM8 also received plenty of attention for its exhibition of the latest version of UC-Win/Road and the road GIS data with cooperation from National Institute for Land and Infrastructure Management, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT).
Moreover, the congress held a Ministerial Round Table with a top-class political cast. They commonly declared to promote the deployment of ITS and to firmly integrate the outcomes of future ITS World Congresses into the structuring of political frameworks.
On the other hand, ITS Japan introduces the summary of the congress, points
of the plenary session and demonstrations, entry information for sessions
and exhibition (including FORUM8) from Japan on its Web page related with
the congress (http://www.its-jp.org/conference/world_congress_list/vienna2012/).
| Towards Creation and Enhancement of New Road Functions Including ITS by
Coordinating the Government and Private Sector |
Highway Industry Development Organization (HIDO) has a mission to contribute to sturdy advancement of road functions as well as expansion of road developments, which in turn stimulates the national economy and quality of life.
It was July 1984 when HIDO was founded in aiming to create and enhance the functions of the nation's roads by coordinating the efforts of the government and private sector. To achieve this aim, the following approaches have been defined since then:
(1) studies and researches the potential of new road-associated industry
fields
(2) sets up new road development programs
(3) liaises and coordinates with road-associated entities to proceed with new road-associated industries and conduct publication activities, and
(4) conducts consignment works associated with those listed above.
During this time, roads have been making a huge contribution to the development of the Japanese economy and the improvement of standard of life. However, there are also growing road problems such as traffic accidents, traffic congestion and environmental pollution. In recent years, in addition, it is required to respond to social changes in our nation including the information age, the aging society and globalization.
With these as background, HIDO has been engaged in a wide range of activities
as follows:
(1) Intelligent Transport System (ITS) promotions,
(2) Wide area information network promotions for safe and secure communities,
(3) Urban area rehabilitation promotions for attractive and competitive
cities,
(4) Business for road environment for environmental business promotion,
(5) Research for newly evolving business for road traffic information dissemination
(6) Research for highly improved road traffic environments and efficient
transport,
(7) Support for international standardizations about ITS and other related
communications.
Among these about ITS promotions, HIDO works on construction of a 'Smartway', the new road that can respond to the user's point of view, as well as R&D on the 'Smartway' components, which are a communication platform, a data platform, and an information network platform to realize diversified ITS services. In specific, HIDO makes efforts in enhanced VICS services, diversified ETC deployment, services using DSRC, regional ITS promotion etc.
As part of this, HIDO's Website presents ITS-related information mainly for the members in columns in 'Topics', 'News Headlines', and 'ITS News Headlines'. It also sets 'What's ITS' page that collects various information on ITS.
For instance, "Multi-faceted development of ITS" shows links to information and related sites according to categories such as Multi-faceted development of car navigation, ETC, Free Mobility Assistance Project, Bus location system, Town Car Life Navi, Regional ITS activities, and ITS for disaster preventions. "ITS International Standardization" provides access to the related detailed information from individual themes including the necessity of International Standardization activities, International Organization for Standardization (ISO), ISO/TC204, International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and Glossary.
What's more, 'ITS Glossary' is organized based on information compiled by Committee for summarizing ITS foreign documents for the purpose of keeping the consistency of notation for ITS terminology within the range of typical translation in preparing English materials used in ITS World Congress and such. It allows both Japanese-English and English-Japanese search and is open to pubic so that it can be used widely as a reference under the responsibility of the user.
Besides, "ITS Technical Information" covers information on about different ITS services such as Car navigation systems, ETC, Advanced Cruise-Assist Highway Systems (AHS), and Advances Safety Vehicle (ASV).
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Home: Highway Industry Development Organization
(HIDO) |
Multifaceted Development of ITS |
ITS Glossary (legend) |
(Written by Takashi Ikeno)
(Images provided by HIDO: Highway Industry Development Organization)
The latter part of this article (Introduction of ITS-related Website) is written with permission of HIDO: Highway Industry Development Organization. |
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