Intelligent Transport Systems: Past, Present and Future Directions

Preface of the Book

The book “Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS): Past, Present and Future Directions” introduces the reader to the fundamentals of the ITS. It provides an overview of their evolution, starting from the earliest experiments on the route guidance systems in the ‘70s to their current deployment, and discusses the main challenges to face for their future development.

The basic concept of the book is that the true intelligence of the ITS is in the design of the control logic, which exploits the Information and Communications Technology as the enabling tool that empowers the interactions between the components of the system.

Chapter 1 introduces the general framework of the ITS and highlights the common feedback control framework, consisting of sensors, processors, actuators, and communication system, that characterizes both network-wide and onboard ITS applications.

The chapters from 2 to 5 describe the necessary technologies of the ITS. Chapter 2, coauthored by Dalla Chiara, Deflorio, and Carboni, describes the sensor technologies that enable traffic and vehicle monitoring. Chapters 3, by Silva, Bonnin, and Ernst, introduces a standardized ITS communication architecture to connect vehicles to everything within their environment and focuses on the need for an efficient optimization process to manage the data flow between heterogeneous communication networks. Chapter 4, coauthored by Kchiche and Kamoum, explains the role of the communication infrastructure in the vehicular environment and introduces a novel approach that takes into account the contention problem relative to the wireless channel. Chapter 5 discusses the methods to extract knowledge from the data coming from vehicles’ sensors and provides an overview of the main challenges that must be faced in order to deal with spatial-based data produced by the connected cars.

The chapters from 6 to 8 illustrate the control systems that enable the ITS acting on the transport system characteristics. Chapter 6, by L. Meschini, describes the typical functionalities and components required by a control room and gives evidence of the emerging trends and opportunities. Chapter 7, by Fusco, Gentile, and P. Meschini, deals with the strategies for urban traffic signal optimization, from the basic offline rules to more advanced online network management. Chapter 8, by Pasquale, Sacone, and Siri, focuses on ramp metering control strategies that regulate traffic in freeway networks and introduces a two-class feedback controller suitable to reduce traffic emissions.

Chapters 9 and 10 deal with the models necessary to simulate the transport system: the former, co-authored by Cipriani and Nigro, describes the methods to estimate and predict time-dependent origin-destination demand; the latter, authored by Abdelfatah, presents an overview of the dynamic traffic assignment models and illustrates some present and future applications to simulate the impacts of different ITS policies on traffic network performances.

Chapter 11, authored by Fusco, deals with dynamic traveler information systems: starting from theoretical principles, it describes technical features of the earliest route guidance systems and then depicts the future directions for empowering users participation to the information system deployment.

The last two chapters tackle the challenges and opportunities related to the deployment of fully automated vehicles. Chapter 12, by Alessandrini, uses the experience of the European CityMobil2 project, the first experiment that carried thousands of passengers on automated road vehicles and defines key passages to design and manage transport systems based on automated road vehicles. Chapter 13, authored by Belov, investigates the opportunities to improve traffic network efficiency by a distribution of automated vehicle flows in time and space.

Table of Contents 

1.     Introduction to Intelligent Transportation Systems. Gaetano Fusco. Department of Civil, Constructional and Environmental Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy.

2.    Basic Technologies for ITS and Applications:  The present and future of traffic and vehicle monitoring. Bruno Dalla Chiara, Francesco Deflorio, Angela Carboni. Dept. DIATI - Transport systems, Politecnico di Torino, Torino, Italy.

3.    Opportunistic Networking for ITS. Rodrigo Silva, Jean-Marie Bonnin (Telecom Bretagne, Rennes, France), Thierry Ernst (YoGoKo, France).

4.    Evaluation and Optimization of Infrastructure Deployment Strategies for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks. Amine Kchiche and Farouk Kamoun. National School of Computer Science, Campus universitaire 2010 Manouba, Tunisia.

5.    Knowledge Discovery from Spatial Big Data for ITS. Sergio Di Martino. DIETI, University of Naples “Federico II”, Naples, Italy.

6.    Modern Traffic Control Centres and Traffic Management Systems. Lorenzo Meschini. SISTeMA s.r.l., PTV Group. Rome, Italy.

7.    Urban Traffic Signal Optimisation. Gaetano Fusco, Guido Gentile, Pietro Meschini. Department of Civil, Constructional and Environmental Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy.

8.    Sustainable Ramp Metering for Freeway Traffic Control. Cecilia Pasquale, Simona Sacone, Silvia Siri. Department of Informatics, Bioengineering, Robotics and Systems Engineering, University of Genova, Italy.

9.    Dynamic Travel Demand Estimation and Prediction Methods. Ernesto Cipriani, Marialisa Nigro. Department of Engineering, “Roma Tre” University, Rome, Italy

10.  Dynamic Traffic Assignment for ITS. Akmal Abdelfatah. Civil Engineering Department, American University of Sharjah, Sharjah, UAE.

11.  Dynamic Traveler Information Systems. Gaetano Fusco, Chiara Colombaroni, Natalia Isaenko. Department of Civil, Constructional and Environmental Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy.

12.  Automated Road Vehicles and Transport Systems. Adriano Alessandrini. DICeA - Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile e Ambientale, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy.

13. Traffic Management Perspectives in Presence of Autonomous Vehicles. Aleksandr V. Belov. Transportation Systems Department, Saint-Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering, Saint-Petersburg, Russia.