Cross-cutting Issues

It does not take a clairvoyant to predict the role and importance that web services will
have in intelligent transportation systems (ITS).  The question that is in everyone's mind
is how will it fit into the framework already established by the many standards and
working groups?  This paper examines one web service aspect that is compatible with the
current ITS framework and is foundational to its future development.  That one aspect is
discovery, which is the publishing and finding of resources over a wide-area network.  
Generally speaking, a discovery system requires a namespace that adequately defines its
domain.  Therefore, an ITS discovery system needs an ITS namespace based upon a well
known and accepted taxonomy in the transportation industry.   The obvious fit for the ITS
namespace is the taxonomy defined by the National ITS Architecture.  By mapping this
taxonomy into a discovery system, transportation can take an easy but vital stride in
defining standards for center-to-center (C2C) web services.  This is especially important
for emerging C2C applications, because a common discovery system will facilitate the
future networking of transportation regions. The C2C working group has already taken an
important first step by defining a naming convention to uniquely identify centers and
resources within the United States (NTCIP 1104).  Without much effort, the ITS
namespace can provide a valuable extension to this convention through the specification
of the ITS discovery service.  In other words, ITS discovery is a web service that uses the
C2C naming and the National ITS Architecture taxonomy for the definition and
discovery of centers and their shared resources.  This paper begins by comparing three
parts of business-to-business (B2B) activities with and center-to-center (C2C) activities.  
Of the three parts, discovery is shown to be key.  The B2B industry is in the process of
adopting a standard discovery web service, called the Universal Description, Discovery,
and Integration (UDDI) service.  Likewise in California, the San Diego region is
developing a so-called Center Description, Discovery, and Integration (CDDI) service.  
There are five steps for adapting B2B UDDI service for use with C2C CDDI service.  
CDDI data structures are discussed and the paper concludes by showing how centers
would use CDDI.  This approach is under development in San Diego's Intermodal
Transportation Management System (IMTMS) and may become the regional standard.  
At the National level, the CDDI and its associated center object designs have not yet been
presented to the center-to-center working group, mainly because of development delays
and overloaded agendas.

National Engineering Technology (NET)

Presented at the ITS America Annual Conference and Exposition, April 26 - 28, 2004 San Antonio, Texas

The wireless local area network (WLAN) was originally conceived to address the indoor
enterprise market.  As prices decreased and technology improved, WLAN moved into many
other areas including the home, public hotspots, municipal access, and public safety.  This
paper documents the results of a WLAN deployment that occurred at one of the busiest
intersections in the northwest suburbs of Detroit.  The goal of the deployment was to provide
802.11b wireless coverage to permit vehicle probe data collection.  Specific measurement
data relating to the RF environment is included.  For comparison purposes, data is also
provided that was recorded at a nearby intersection.  This information may be applied to any
application in which WLAN will be used in an outdoor environment.

Motorola

Presented at the 15th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems, November 16-20, 2008, New York, New York

As ITS projects increasingly move into the deployment stage, the issue of software and system development practices becomes ever more critical. Virtually every transportation management system is now dependent on mission critical software for its proper functioning. Problems with large (and even medium scale) software development projects are legendary, running the gamut from cost overruns and major schedule delays, to the more critical issues of system safety, reliability and security. As a project advances further into its life cycle, solutions for design and coding errors become more complex and therefore more costly. The sad fact is that although these errors are largely preventable through the art of requirements management, this art is too often misunderstood and misapplied. Worse, in some cases there is no recognizable effort that is applied towards this key step of systems engineering.

National Engineering Technology Corporation

Presented at the 10th ITS Annual Conference and Exposition, May 1-4, 2000 Boston, MA

The San Diego Intermodal Transportation Management System (IMTMS) is a regional project consisting of the integration of four transportation modal management systems: the Intermodal Advanced Traffic Management System (ATMSi) for freeway management, the Regional Arterial Management System, Transit Management System, InterCAD Incident Management System and Advanced Traveler Information Management System for Information Service Provider dissemination. A separate project for event management, called the Mission Valley ATMS/ATIS System provides a data and video Intertie between the City of San Diego and Caltrans and will fall under the regional IMTMS umbrella. A regional communications network will be built (and leased) to support connection of the modal management systems. Systems connecting to this regional network will conform to the Common Object Request Broker Architecture specifications being developed for the Southern California Priority Corridor Showcase network. These specifications also conform to National ITS Architecture standards for Center to Center communications. Part of the specifications include an Interface Definition Language, a lingua franca for describing transportation objects in a common format across dissimilar systems.

National Engineering Technology Corporation

Presented at the 11th ITS Annual Conference and Exposition, June 4-7, 2001 Miami Beach, Florida

Adaptive traffic control systems (ATCS) have become popular in recent years as the

technology has improved and product vendors have made deployment and operations easier

and more reliable. Unfortunately, the features and capabilities of ATCS are still

misunderstood by many traffic engineers and system operators. The very term “adaptive

control” is used to describe systems that may, in fact, provide measureable benefits over

conventional fixed time or actuated control, but are not actually true adaptive control

systems. This paper describes the widely accepted concept of “true” adaptive traffic control

and compares how it is supported by several of the market leading vendors’ products.

Telvent Transportation North America

Telvent - Trafico y Transporte

Presented at the 18th World Congress on ITS, October 2011, Orlando, Florida