News

Esri’s founder Jack Dangermond will tell delegates at the ITS World Congress in Melbourne that GIS, spatial technology, mapping and modelling are the keys that will unlock the door to tomorrow’s smart cities.

ITS Australia has teamed up with Mastercard to present the ITS 2016 Mastercard Smart Cities Hackathon which will be staged at the ITS World Congress Melbourne. With more than $20,000 in prizes, the Smart City Hack, being held on Saturday 8 and Sunday 9 October, will bring together Australia’s most talented developers, designers and entrepreneurs to create a new wave of smart city services and solutions.

It would be hard to imagine a more appropriate venue for the 23rd ITS World Congress which runs from 10-14 October. For the 6th successive year, Melbourne has won the title of the World’s Most Liveable City, helped by its perfect 100 out of 100 score for infrastructure.

As well as featuring its involvement in an innovative new test bed in Australia, PTV Group will use the ITS World Congress Melbourne to highlight that smart living needs to be based on smart solutions. As the company points out, buildings and infrastructure pop up like mushrooms creating a steadily rising number of mega-cities and more people means less individual space and increased mobility challenges.

Itree, a new member of ITS Australia, will be attending its first ITS World Congress. With over 20 years’ experience delivering road, rail and maritime regulatory solutions, Itree says its decision to join ITS Australia is a timely strategic move for the Wollongong-based company.

Enhanced encryption capabilities and broad range of technology integrations provide greater flexibility for enterprises to protect big data deployments Dutch digital security specialist Gemalto has carried out a major expansion of its SafeNet data protection portfolio that makes it easier for enterprises to protect big data deployments in the cloud, data center, and virtualised environments.

The Washington DC-based Alliance for Transportation Innovation (ATI21) is a new consortium of innovators, experts and researchers and is headed by former US DoT and Defence Department insider Paul Brubaker. The non-profit organisation aims to increase public awareness of the benefits of transport innovations and to lobby leaders and lawmakers on behalf of its members.

Eurotunnel, owner of the Channel Tunnel, a key high-speed trnsport connection between the UK and France, has selected Arbor technology’s FPC-7701 fanless box PC for both its manned and fully automated toll booths which require reliable ruggedised embedded computing systems to maximise check-in efficiency. Processes such as number plate recognition, barrier control and ticket printing are controlled through this PC interface.

The ITS World Congress 2016 Hall of Fame winners have been announced and will be inducted into the Hall of Fame at the 23rd ITS World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems, 10-14 October, Melbourne, Australia.

Q-Free and local partner Telekom Slovenije have been awarded a contract for the nationwide truck tolling project by DARS in Slovenia. The contract value for Q-Free is approximately US$57.5 million (NOK 470 million).

Global location technology company, Here, will be asking delegates to the ITS World Congress Melbourne to imagine a world where everything has an IP address and a location; where every piece of data is understood in a geospatial context. The company will be showcasing a new generation of mobility, transportation and infrastructure services born out of this very vision – the Here Open Location Platform.

The Adelaide-headquartered Department for Planning, Transport and Infrastructure has partnered with Sydac and Sage Automation to showcase South Australian transport and technology innovation at the ITS World Congress Melbourne. Visitors to the stand (2213) will be able to try rail and bus training simulators, as well as check out Addinsight, a freeway and arterial road incident detection and congestion management system.

RailConnect NSW (RailConnect), an unincorporated joint venture formed by Mitsubishi Electric’s wholly-owned subsidiary Mitsubishi Electric Australia, Hyundai Rotem and UGL, has been awarded a contract by Transport for New South Wales (TfNSW), Australia for the delivery and maintenance of a new fleet of trains for the New Intercity Fleet.

Partnership delivers self-driving AI solution with connection to the Baidu cloud for all car makers. Baidu and NVIDIA are to partner in an agreement that will use artificial intelligence (AI) in the creation of a cloud-to-car autonomous car platform for local Chinese and global car makers.

Loudoun County, Virginia has launched a new real-time bus information system that provides commuter bus riders with accurate arrival times of their buses. Bus Time is a web-based tool that can be viewed using a web browser on a mobile device, laptop or PC. This program helps passengers plan their commute by allowing them to see the next several buses scheduled to arrive at their selected stop.