Skip to main content

Developing open systems for Europe’s urban ITS

Europe’s POSSE (Promoting Open Specifications and Standards in Europe) is developing best practice guidelines for open urban transport systems, including case study examples, which will be open to all and which will set out the process for implementing open specifications and standards. POSSE believes open specifications and standards offer many benefits especially the ease with which different Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) can share and exchange information.
October 29, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
Europe’s POSSE (Promoting Open Specifications and Standards in Europe) is developing best practice guidelines for open urban transport systems, including case study examples, which will be open to all and which will set out the process for implementing open specifications and standards.  POSSE believes open specifications and standards offer many benefits especially the ease with which different Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) can share and exchange information.

The six partners from the UK, Spain, Italy, Lithuania, Norway and the Czech Republic have undertaken to engage with their key national players in order to raise awareness and build consensus on open systems.

Intelligent transport systems (ITS) are widely implemented in cities and regions to manage traffic and influence travel behaviour through systems such as adaptive area-wide traffic control, real-time travel information, bus priority at traffic lights, smart card ticketing and car park management and guidance, among others. ITS have largely been implemented in an un-coordinated and incremental way, due in part to the multitude of organisations involved, the absence of a common set of open ITS standards and specifications in Europe, and the prevalence of closed, proprietary systems within the market.

To enable other public authorities with an interest in open systems to benefit from the knowledge sharing within POSSE and to interact with partners, an Open ITS Systems Forum will be established. The call for applications to join the forum is open now and will close on 7 December 2012.

Related Content

  • Project CROCODILE wins award for smart use of data
    May 16, 2016
    Project CROCODILE, which was launched in 2013 to establish a trans-national data exchange infrastructure to end breakdown of cross-border traffic has won the 2016 Transport Achievement Award in the freight category. The prize is awarded by the International Transport Forum (ITF), a Paris-based intergovernmental organisation and policy think tank with 57 member countries. The project is co-financed by the European Union’s TEN-T programme and aimed to establish a framework to collect and exchange data for
  • New approach to data handling aids development of smarter cities
    January 14, 2013
    David Crawford has been to the Irish capital to see a potent memorandum of understanding at work. An imaginative collaboration between the world’s largest IT company and one of Europe’s smaller capital cities is demonstrating a new approach to data handling that could have far reaching implications for urban public transport worldwide. A close working relationship between IBM and Dublin City Council (DCC) dates from 2010.
  • New approach to data handling aids development of smarter cities
    January 11, 2013
    David Crawford has been to the Irish capital to see a potent memorandum of understanding at work. An imaginative collaboration between the world’s largest IT company and one of Europe’s smaller capital cities is demonstrating a new approach to data handling that could have far reaching implications for urban public transport worldwide. A close working relationship between IBM and Dublin City Council (DCC) dates from 2010. The IT giant was looking for a local transport authority as partner for testing IBM’s
  • New approach to data handling aids development of smarter cities
    January 11, 2013
    David Crawford has been to the Irish capital to see a potent memorandum of understanding at work. An imaginative collaboration between the world’s largest IT company and one of Europe’s smaller capital cities is demonstrating a new approach to data handling that could have far reaching implications for urban public transport worldwide. A close working relationship between IBM and Dublin City Council (DCC) dates from 2010. The IT giant was looking for a local transport authority as partner for testing IBM’s