research needs

Preparing the Way for Vehicle-Infrastructure Integration

The essence of an Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) is the ability to combine information gathered from both vehicle and infrastructure sources, to fuse it efficiently, and to use it to improve the operational capabilities of both vehicle and infrastructure systems. This concept of Vehicle-Infrastructure Integration (VII) has recently attracted strong interest among the automotive industry and state DOTs, which are now discussing how to work together to implement it. In order for the VII deployment to be effective, it will be necessary to address a wide variety of research issues which are currently not receiving much attention. This project proposes to identify the most important of those issues, including both technical and institutional issues, and to outline how these issues can be addressed in future research that could be conducted for VII information system architecture and business models will be defined to provide a point of departure. Individual research topics will then be defined and the time and resources needed for these projects will be estimated, at a few levels of breath and depth. This represents a rare opportunity to define a substantial research agenda that can support fundamental improvements in the oepration of the transportation system, and that can leverage future state research funds with substantial federal resources as well.

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