TISA prepares for the ITS World Congress at the latest Committee Meetings and General Assembly

On 8 and 9 June 2021, TISA Members gathered virtually for the annual General Assembly and Committee Meetings. Following an opening speech by TISA President Thomas Kusche-Knežević, the Report from the Executive Office and matters requiring the General Assembly, Members were addressed by Deutsche Bahn’s Ingo Ritter and Realis’ Luka Krevs.

In the TISA Committee Meetings and the General Assembly, which were carried out as online meetings, but hopefully will continue soon as on-site meetings in Brussels again, Members of the Traveller Information Services Association discussed important current matters and benefitted from three presentations, both internal and external to TISA.

Starting with Deutsche Bahn’s presentation on its positive experience with TPEG2-PTS, a presentation on TPEG2-EAW (Emergency Alert Warnings) followed. “Soon in August, the field trial on TPEG2-EAW will come to a conclusion, to ultimately be standardised at ISO”, said Teun Hendriks, TISA. “For the moment, work on TPEG2-EAW is mostly carried out in Germany, but our goal is to provide this service all over Europe and overseas. For this reason, we look forward presenting the results of TISA’s evaluation at the upcoming ITS World Congress this October”, he concluded.

Last but not least, Realis, a leading ITS & GIS provider, presented its range of geographic information system and location based services, which are currently used in various European-funded projects, cross-country collaborations, European Access Point for Truck Parking Data Exchange and more.

After two days of fruitful meetings, TISA Members are now preparing for the upcoming ITS World Congress, which will be the first international ITS event to be held in presence. Find out about TISA’s activities in Hamburg at this link, and don’t forget to subscribe to TISA’s newsletter to receive all the latest updates!

All presentations are available on TISA confluence.

Data-Driven Traffic Engineering: Understanding of Traffic and Applications Based on Three-Phase Traffic Theory

Are you an engineer or scientist who deals with congestion modeling and measurement problems? Then this publication is for you! “Data-Driven Traffic Engineering: Understanding of Traffic and Applications Based on Three-Phase Traffic Theory”, by Rehborn Hubert (from TISA Member Daimler), Koller and Kaufmann, shifts the current focus from using modeling and simulation data for traffic measurements to the use of actual data. The book uses real-world, empirically-derived data from a large fleet of connected vehicles, local observations and aerial observation to shed light on key traffic phenomena.

Readers will learn how to develop an understanding of the empirical features of vehicular traffic networks and how to consider these features in emerging, intelligent transport systems. Topics cover congestion patterns, fuel consumption, the influence of weather, and much more. This book offers a unique, data-driven analysis of vehicular traffic in traffic networks, also considering how to apply data-driven insights to the intelligent transport systems of the future.

The publication can be found at this link.

Mobility data platforms, DATEXII and truck platooning in focus during TISA committee meetings 

During the Committee Meetings held virtually in March, TISA Members were joined by representatives of BASt (Federal Highway Research Institute Germany), DATEX II, TNO and ACEA to learn more about mobility data platforms in Europe, recent developments on DATEXII, data for road safety as well as progress on truck platooning topics.

TISA Members gathered once again virtually to continue shaping the quality of travel information services worldwide, this time joined by representatives from companies and organizations that focus on the mobility data platforms, data exchange in context with safety-related traffic information as well as truck platooning.

‘We are following closely the development of the national data platforms as they boost the availability of traffic related data and lower the thresholds for new entrants and innovative services. Glad to see also that the Data For Road Safety group is making good progress to shape the Safety Related Traffic Information (SRTI) ecosystem.’, says Matthias Unbehaun, TISA Executive Director. ‘Not to forget to mention our long and fruitful collaboration with the DATEX II community, which resulted in such milestone publications like the Safety-related Message Sets for SRTI, of which we just published the 3^rd revision.’, he added.

Peter Lubrich (BASt) opened the meetings with an overview of NAPs (NAPs is a term initiated by the European Commission in the ITS Directive and stands for National Access Points) as a building block for the digitalisation of mobility, and provided an overview of the ecosystem of data platforms across Europe from their perspective. With many TISA Members using data at National Access Points in their services, Mr. Lubrich’s presentation was very useful, especially when considering NAPs as facilitators in the exchange and reuse of data, connectors of data suppliers and users, and supporters of EU-wide interoperable ITS services. In fact, NAPs are a key element to successful ITS services across different actors, use cases and countries, as they provide access to a wide variety of data coming from different countries.

Moving on to the rail sector, Thomas Kusche-Knežević (WRD) announced a cooperation between German rail operator Deutsche Bahn and the German national broadcaster ARD that resulted in a new TPEG service.

‘Nearly half of our audience uses public transport for their regular mobility needs. It is an exciting approach to inform such a huge crowd on the same well-known platform, traditionally provided for road users. Based on the powerful capabilities of TPEG, Deutsche Bahn and ARD will showcase the opportunities during ITS Hamburg as an improvement for sustainable mobility.’, he added.

Deutsche Bahn is cooperating with TISA member ARD on their mobility data platform, thanks to which this data can be transferred to TPEG using the TPEG PTS specification (Public Transport information services).

From rail back to road traffic, Bard de Vries (Chair of the DATEX II Technical Group and Chair SRTI Working Group) provided an update on DATEX II version 3, glancing through its content part, as well as its components, ending with DATEX II in the NAPs ecosystem.

‘DATEX II and TISA for a symbiotic relation in a way that DATEX II covers the content segment of the value chain, connecting data centres, traffic operators and service providers, whereas TPEG provides the downlink to the end user.’, continues Matthias Unbehaun. ‘To keep both developments in sync is of vital importance to ensure reliable, high-quality traffic services’.

An important part of Mr. de Vries’ presentation was the update on the SRTI document and its third revision.

‘A harmonized message set for safety related traffic information is a key ingredient towards the effective warning of drivers on the road for unusual, safety impacting situations. This third version of the guideline for safety-related traffic message sets reflects the latest developments and practices in the collection and provisioning of safety-related traffic information. Prepared and harmonized with an increasing group of stakeholder organizations, this effort shows that fostering traffic safety by better information is an enduring focus theme throughout Europe, for both public and private stakeholders alike.’, said Teun Hendriks, Chair of the TISA Technical and Standardisation Committee.

Dehlia Willemsen (Research Scientist at TNO) presented the EU-funded project ENSEBMLE (ENabling SafE Multi-Brand Platooning for Europe), with its design and implementation of platooning as a support function, as well as latest results. The main goal of ENSEMBLE is to harmonise multi-brand specifications, realising a multi-brand V2V communication protocol leading to standards for truck interoperability, based on a communication protocol that could provide valuable information to traffic participants around a platoon and hence be of high interest for TISA.

Ending the committee meeting presentations, Joost Vantomme (ACEA Smart Mobility Director and Chair of the Data for Road Safety Partnership) provided an overview of data sharing for road safety, focusing on European policy, types of data and roles.

The March Committee Meetings were also an opportunity for Members to follow-up on important matters concerning technical standardisation, the products committee and the activities and executive office reporting.

The TISA Committee meetings provide a very important opportunity for the TISA community to meet, present new Use Case Proposals and discuss the priority for the work programme of the TISA Working Groups and Task Forces. TISA Members will reconvene for the next Committee Meetings and General Assembly on 8 and 9 June 2021.

All presentations are available for TISA Members on confluence.

Registrations are open for the15th Open Auto Drive Forum in May

The 15^th Open Auto Drive Forum will be online on May 6, 2021.

The meetings starts at 08:00 CEST (06:00 AM UCT). The keynote “A System Engineering Perspective on Autonomous Vehicle IT Standardization” will be from François Coallier, École de Technologie Supérieure in Montreal. As always, the agenda includes updates on the activities/plans of Standardization Organizations Regarding Autonomous Driving: ADASIS, NDS, SENSORIS, SIP-adus, TISA, TN-ITS as well as ASAM OpenX.

Please check our agenda of the day!

Real time transmission of external data for Automated Driving vehicles based on TPEG technology is demonstrated for the first time

Developers from TomTom and NNG have demonstrated a live data feed that provides external real-time data specifically tailored for Automated Driving (AD) vehicles, thus increasing safety and ensuring better traffic management. This is possible thanks to the new generation of TPEG3 data feed developed by TISA (Traveller Information Services Association).

TISA members TomTom, the location technology specialist, and NNG have proven the possibility and the benefits of sending real-time data specifically generated to supplement the onboard sensor data of an AD vehicle from an emergency vehicle. The data feed generated by TomTom in Berlin was perfectly received in Budapest by NNG, who processed the data using an autonomous driving simulation. This triggers certain actions, such as forming an emergency lane or informing passengers about deviations of the planned route, as well as preventing non-standard manoeuvres caused by an approaching emergency vehicle that the passengers might not yet be aware of.

“Emergency situations require rapid action to help save lives, so it’s critical that drivers and vehicles can be warned to make way for emergency services. TomTom is always developing new solutions to help make roads safer for everyone and this exciting collaboration has the potential to further enhance the TomTom Hazard Warnings service.” – Ralf-Peter Schäfer, VP Traffic and Travel, TomTom.

“NNG is excited to participate in the development and piloting of future Information for Automated Driving (TPEG3) as it fits perfectly in our technology vision supporting traveller experience in the automated driving era. NNG’s Intelligent Co-Driver concept is able to make use of the TPEG3 specified dynamic data to keep the vehicles and their occupants up-to-date about safety relevant traffic situations. TPEG3-EVA demonstrator therefore is a key milestone for us through. We strengthened the cooperation with other members of the traveller and traffic information ecosystem.” – NNG CTO Martin Pfeifle.

“The results of the demonstration exceeded our expectations on the value that the TPEG3 data could deliver to improve the autonomous driving strategy and tactics in the given context of an approaching emergency vehicle. This was a very promising first demonstration, which paves the way for more use cases to which the TPEG3 data feed will be expanded, so a lot of development and standardization lies ahead of us.” – TISA Executive Director Matthias Unbehaun.

At the base of this demonstration was a completely updated version of the TPEG2 protocol, which is the successor of the globally very successful RDS-TMC and nowadays part of most modern navigation systems. It offers a method for transmitting multimodal traffic and travel information, regardless of client type, location or delivery channel (e.g. mobile networks, DAB, HD radio, etc.). However, to suit the specific needs of AD vehicles concerning flexibility of delivery, as well as richness and granularity of the information, a completely new data model was conceived and combined with state-of-the-art serialization and compression, plus a hybrid request-response / publish-subscribe communication paradigm. The first main objective of TPEG3 is to improve situation awareness by providing an ‘additional sensor’ for AD vehicles, effectively extending the range of onboard sensors whilst being faster than current map updating techniques. The second objective is to support traffic control strategies and policies for the safe and efficient usage of available road infrastructure.

TISA will now start improving the logical data model, adding a large number of new use cases requested by TISA members. TISA will also integrate rich meta-data to describe quality characteristics and the provenance of the source data, as well as to assist the processing and interpretation of the information in the AD vehicle with rich contextual information. TISA will further liaise with other standardization organizations to ensure alignment and interoperability with in-vehicle communication (e.g. ADASIS) and to integrate an uplink channel to feed data from the AD vehicle back to the service provider (e.g. using SENSORIS).