Florin Codrut Nemtanu

Autonomic Transport Management Systems—Enabler for Smart Cities, Personalized Medicine, Participation and Industry Grid/Industry 4.0

Today’s societies are facing great challenges in transforming living environments in a way better serving people’s demands of the future. A key point in this transformation is reinventing cities as smart cities, where the core services are integrated in a way that ensures a high quality of life while minimizing the usage of resources [Smart cities in Europe. Serie Research Memoranda 0048, VU University Amsterdam, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Econometrics 1]. Setting up smart cities resp. transforming cities to smart cities includes the development of smart transport systems as a main service all other services rely on. Thinking about current mega trends like Individualization of Products (Mass Customization) in so called Industry grid also known as Industry 4.0 [Umsetzungsempfehlungen fur das Zukunftsprojekt Industrie 4.0 2] (Industrie 4.0 describes the industry in the 4th industrial revolution to customized mass production after mechanization, mass production, digitalization [Map ‘n’ tag. Thinking highways 3]), Personalized Medicine or the need of better support for disabled and older people in an aging society, the interconnection of involved bodies is a premise. In virtual world this means integration of data networks and ICTs in the physical world this means establishing individual and personalized transport services that cover individual mobility and individual distribution of goods. To ensure the best utilization of infrastructure while having less employable people in an aging society a high grade of automation and information integration is needed. We call this a smart transport system as the next step in development of today’s intelligent transport systems (ITS) and propose establishing this ITS of the future as an autonomic system to meet all the different requirements and ensure a high reliability of the overall system. Reliability is essential since most other services of the living environment smart city, will rely on transport systems. This chapter gives an overview on state of research based on current literature and recent publications of the authors (see references) and focus on the ICT system needed to manage transportation the autonomic transport management system.

Framework for an Autonomic Transport System in Smart Cities

Abstract Today the concept of smart cities is discussed in scientific society and politics. A core function of smart cities is transportation. This paper gives a short overview on the concepts for Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) for smart cities and proposes a framework for the design of an autonomic transportation system that provides personalized mobility services to its users in a smart city setting. The transportation poses extreme environment for ICT systems due to fast moving vehicles and users, requiring real-time acquisition and high performance processing of large scale data, and rapidly changing communication networks topologies and node densities. The aim of this paper is to propose a framework that will act as a reference for the design of future transportation systems that are able to cope with the ever rising system complexities and users’ demands. Therefore, a backbone system providing information at different levels was designed following the principles of a corporative ICT that were proposed in [1]. The framework fulfills the main requirement providing suitable information about the local decision engines in vehicles and infrastructure interacting in smart cities traffic systems.

Monitoring system with applications in road transport

The paper describes a modern traffic monitoring system designed to optimize road traffic flow, while ensuring mobility and access with the aim of meeting the current and future necessities for road travel. Furthermore, the proposed system complies with the requirements for rational use of urban land and the regulation on environmental protection. The importance of finding such solution derives from the current problems faced by the urban road traffic, such as congestions, pollution, security issues. It is with the purpose of solving traffic flow and security problems that the authors are proposing in this paper the implementation of an innovative system utilizing new technologies for real-time collecting, organizing and transmitting of information about traffic and weather conditions. To this end, data collection and processing were performed using LabVIEW programming.

Increasing Sustainability of Road Transport in European Cities and Metropolitan Areas by Facilitating Autonomic Road Transport Systems (ARTS)

The frequent failure of road transportation networks, resulting from traffic incidents, system overloading and lack of optimised support systems is becoming a problem in keeping modern cities functioning, because those incidents affect both, personal mobility and transportation of goods including everyday commodities. Inefficient systems lead to a waste of resources (infrastructure and energy). Therefore not only efficiency of vehicles but efficiency of whole systems needs to be considered to increase sustainability in road transportation. This paper shows the approach using Autonomic Road Transport Systems (ARTS) and gives an overview on upcoming challenge for vehicle manufacturers and scientific society.

New Technologies and ITS for Rail

This chapter presents the new technologies which can be applied in Railway Transport Systems to improve the efficiency and facilitate multimodality in the sector. The authors start this discussion with the description of the safety principles and the new technologies from data collection (sensors) to data processing and providing information. A multimodality approach has to be considered to ensure the interoperability and integration of all ITS systems from different transport modes. The main result of applying new technologies and ITS in Railway is the digitalisation of this sector.

Digital Railway: Trends and Innovative Approaches

The amazing development speed of innovative technologies especially in the field of ICT is the pavement for new applications in railway transport, and the benefits of these modern technologies are greater than the traditional technologies. These benefits are not measured at the application level but also at the integration of different systems and transport modes based on the exchange of data. The innovative approach is to link the railway vehicles to the infrastructure and to find the way to integrate infrastructures and vehicles from different transport modes. Digital railway is a new concept and new paradigm which is the way to change the architecture of the railway systems and to push a novel approach in designing and developing new railway systems.

Improving Integrated Travel Planning by Enhancing Travel Planning Model with Rail Station Data

Today integrated travel planning takes account of different transport modes, the current state of the transport system and to some extent the preferences of the user. Thus those systems are able to plan a travel as well as give advice during the travel. This chapter shows how to enhance the calculation model of an integrated travel planner to allow not only taking account the usage of vehicles but also the rest of infrastructures like station, including elevators, stairways, crossings, etc. Thus, it allows the creation of a travel planner that enables users using public transport in an intermodal personalized way, particularly those who are mentally or physically impaired. The testing area is in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in particular the area of the Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Ruhr (VRR) transport authority.

Model of intelligent traffic sensors — Application in hardware in the loop

The paper has as main subject the elaboration of a model for traffic sensors. This model is implemented in LabVIEWenvironment and it should be used in hardware in the loop (HIL) platform, especially for urban traffic management system. The authors presented the concept of intelligent sensor for traffic and transport applications and the methodology of defining the model and the software environment of this model. The architecture of the model as well as the main interfaces with virtual and real components of sensors for traffic management systems are also described in the paper. The paper is concluded with the recommendation of using the model in HIL platform as well as the development of an autonomic behaviour of the intelligent sensors.

Systematic and Customer Driven Approach to Cost-Efficiently Improving Interlocking and Signaling in Train Transport

A big challenge for European train companies in the next year will be upgrading large parts of interlocking and signaling to enable Europe-wide train transport. Additional transitions having heavy impact on infrastructure development, including the transition from conventional to high-speed trains and the application of new operation patterns in rail freight aimed at increasing the share of rail in the freight market. The main aspect in accomplishing this transformation is the development and deployment of new technology, but focusing only on technology will fail, since many other organizational components are involved in this transformation. This chapter proposes a holistic approach, starting with gathering customers’ requirements, while also respecting development of the organization as a whole and the personal development of employees. This chapter extends various earlier works of the authors and shows how extending the principles of systems engineering to other domains can help to manage this transformation successfully. The conclusion presents a reference process for service development that can be used as a blue print for participating companies.

The framework of using models for comparative assessment of traffic sensors

The intelligent transport systems (ITS) are now one of the most dynamic sector in terms of finding solutions for transport domain. These systems are applications of electronics, IT, computer science and other connected disciplines which are installed in terms of increasing the efficiency of the transport activities and decreasing the negative impact of them. ITS are mainly based on a sensor network which is able to collect data from transport processes. The paper is focused on elaboration of a common model for traffic sensor which is able to support comparative assessment of various traffic sensors (the example in the paper is based on inductive loops and virtual loops based on CCTV cameras). The framework and the models are created in LabVIEW and an example of using the model in comparative assessment is provided. The authors presented the methodology for the elaboration of the model as well as the recommendations for comparative assessment based on the proposed framework.