First meeting of POSSE Forum on open specs & standards in traffic management held in Dublin on 4 June
The Forum has currently 16 members and many of them gathered in Dublin to learn about the two open systems initiatives involved in POSSE (UTMC in the UK and OCIT/OTS in Germanic part of Europe) and to share their approaches to open systems and/or expectations from the project. Rijkswaterstaat, the Dutch highways authority, presented the DVM Exchange: in the Amsterdam metropolitan area, there is cooperation between the three road authorities to manage the area, each of which has its own traffic control centre. In the past, communication between their respective systems was not possible. DVM Exchange was thus created to enable data transmission between the systems. DVM exchange includes both the horizontal (traffic management centre area) and vertical communication with the different parts of the area and the road segments. A set of general terms to be used by all was put in place, called 'sustainable traffic management'. Rijkswaterstaat wants to test in the Rotterdam-Frankfurt-Vienna corridor whether the standard can be used in a cross-border context.
Examples from other places were presented as well, such as Sao Paulo in Brazil, which has adopted UTMC approach, and Austria, which has decided not to create its own architecture, but to build on a European architecture where they can communicate with neighbouring countries. Presentations by the city of Munich, Reading and Leeds illustrated the practical experiences with OCIT/OTS and UTMC. A discussion followed on the Good Practice Guide that POSSE will produce where the opinion of the Forum members was sought on whether the POSSE consortium is going on the right way.
The meeting concluded with a presentation on the EU ITS Action Plan and ITS Directive given by a representative from the European Commission.
The POSSE Open ITS Systems Forum will meet once more in winter 2013 and again during 2014. The Forum's membership remains open to public institutions. For more information, please visit the POSSE website.