ETSI Intelligent Transport Systems workshop outlines global projects

Sophia Antipolis, 8 March 2019

The annual ETSI Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) workshop ended after 2 days of intensive discussions and networking opportunities between industry, the European Commission and stakeholders involved in Cooperative ITS deployment (C-ITS) worldwide.

With evolving technologies over the last few years, the event has been of immediate relevance for both development of the market and for driving the ongoing evolution of ETSI’s ITS standards programme.

The first day was dedicated to a C-ITS status around the globe with ongoing projects in Europe, the United States, Japan and China, confirming Intelligent Transport Systems’ international interest. The European Commission highlighted elements of the upcoming Delegated Act, which should enable C-ITS deployment in 2019.

An overview of the C-Roads platform, established to coordinate the different European Member States’ deployment activities, highlighted that 15 cities, using ETSI and other standards, should start with a deployment of ITS services this year. To prepare the 2019 world radio conference, spectrum issues were also addressed with the aim to reach a global harmonization of spectrum for Intelligent Transport Systems.

The second day covered security and privacy issues as well as standardization activities, application and use cases. One of the security experts reminded that ITS security needs to address capability first, that is give our systems the ability to do something, then maximize functionality to do it correctly and concurrently address risk to limit the freedom of adversaries to break the system.

During the last day of the workshop, the impact of other changes in the technology environment such as automated vehicle autonomy (non-human controlled vehicles) were also considered. One of the speakers outlined the relevance of Multi-access Edge Computing applied to ITS while another stated that the current position and timing features were not sufficient to protect vulnerable road users (pedestrians, bikers, etc.). A study gave an example of artificial intelligence applied to ITS with deep learning-aided resource orchestration for vehicular safety communication.

Future development of Intelligent Transport Systems and their standardization will include vulnerable road users, accident free automated driving and upcoming radio technologies.