How to Deliver a Large Scale National Connected Vehicle Pilot
- Open Access
- 2026
- OriginalPaper
- Buchkapitel
Erschienen in:
Aktivieren Sie unsere intelligente Suche, um passende Fachinhalte oder Patente zu finden.
Wählen Sie Textabschnitte aus um mit Künstlicher Intelligenz passenden Patente zu finden. powered by
Markieren Sie Textabschnitte, um KI-gestützt weitere passende Inhalte zu finden. powered by (Link öffnet in neuem Fenster)
Abstract
1 Introduction
Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) is implementing a European Commission co-funded national pilot across approximately 355km of the trans-European transport network (TEN-T) that connects Dublin with Cork, Limerick and Northern Ireland. The pilot is delivering 14 C-ITS use cases, representing a mix of Infrastructure-to-Vehicle (I2V) and Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) services, including some urban specific applications in Dublin. The connected vehicle services are being fully integrated into TII’s live traffic management system, being one of only a small number of Member States to achieve this. The pilot is currently in its implementation/data acquisition phase, with numbers of participants growing to a target level of approximately 1,500.
A key objective of Ireland’s Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS) pilot project is to understand how road operators can harness a paradigm shift in traffic management operations through increased vehicle connectivity.
Anzeige
There is no tried and tested blueprint to deliver a large-scale national pilot, as every deployment is different, with differing objectives, stakeholder requirements and different operating environments. There are though some principles that are likely to be common to other connected vehicle deployments.
This paper describes the challenges, outcomes and lessons learnt from TII’s national connected vehicle pilot that may provide insight to other road operators looking to deliver service improvements by capitalising on an increasingly connected vehicle fleet.
2 System Design, Development and Testing
Prior to receiving Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) funding, a series of overarching pilot objectives were developed focusing on testing, validating and evaluating of a mix of ‘day 1’ and ‘day 1.5’ C-ITS services via ITS-G5 and cellular networks, to understand the impact of C-ITS operations from technological, safety, traffic efficiency, environment and compliance perspectives. The C-ITS services selected for implementation have the potential to support TII deliver specific policy objectives (e.g., support progress towards vision zero) or address location specific issues (e.g., significant adverse weather). The pilot impact evaluation will inform TII on how best to invest in scaling and enhancing C-ITS services.
A robust procurement plan will facilitate efficient and effective pilot delivery. Naturally, existing appropriate routes to market should be explored as they offer significant programme-based advantages. Given the nature of a pilot e.g., emerging standards and specifications, there is a need for contracts to support collaboration between contractors, designers and client to facilitate effective research and development related activities. Furthermore, the contract needs to support efficient change management without undue contractual/commercial negotiations to maintain momentum and avoid unnecessary delays. Consideration should be given to the number of equipment suppliers awarded contracts. Having more than one can support the demonstration of interoperability, reduce the impact of vendor lock-in, provide flexibility in the event of product delays and provide competition to drive improved value for money.
Anzeige
The specifications for the core components to implement C-ITS pilot were based on a number of inputs, including C-Roads specifications, C-ITS standards, regulations, policies and guidance from other pilots. The core system components are set out below along with key considerations for what should be included in their specification.
Central C-ITS station (C-ITS-S) –acts as the central control centre for I2V C-ITS services. A large-scale pilot will likely necessitate integrating C-ITS-S with the traffic management system (TMS) for traffic management data. The C-ITS-S relies on data from the TMS for generating C-ITS messages for implementing I2V C-ITS use cases. Further, the generation of C-ITS messages will require more data than the data currently provided by the TMS. Since there was no one-to-one mapping between the TMS data (e.g. incidents records, response plans etc.) and the data required for C-ITS uses cases, operational policies were defined together with appropriate tools for providing required data to the C-ITS-S for implementing the I2V use cases. Also, there is no standard for a common communication interface between the C-ITS-S and the field devices – for this, an Apache Pulsar based pub-sub messaging system was defined for procurement and implementation. This pub-sub messaging system was also used to deliver C-ITS services to road users via cellular networks.
Roadside C-ITS stations – the C-Roads Ireland pilot has equipped approximately 60km of motorway network (M50 and a southern section of the M1) with ITS-G5 roadside C-ITS stations, known as roadside units (RSUs). The rest of the pilot routes are served with cellular network coverage only. A specification for the supply, installation, testing and maintenance of RSUs was prepared. A C-Roads roadside system profile specification was used for ITS-G5 communication and security requirements. In addition, the RSUs were required to use the Apache Pulsar based pub-sub messaging system for communication with the C-ITS-S. Locations for RSU installation were chosen based on site survey and radio coverage modelling. Site selection considered a range of technical and practical factors, including radio parameters, key physical barriers for radio signal propagation, access to power, access to motorway telecommunications network for backhaul communication and location of safety barriers. The radio modelling work helped to reduce the number of sites required for continuous ITS-G5 signal coverage along 60km of the pilot routes from an initial estimate of 108 to 74 - delivering significant cost saving for the pilot.
Vehicle C-ITS stations – the C-Roads Ireland pilot required a mixture of participants equipped with OBUs and bespoke C-ITS smartphone apps. OBUs with hybrid communication (i.e., ITS-G5 plus cellular) capability were procured. The specifications covered equipment supply, their installation, testing, maintenance, as well as use case application software development. C-ITS smartphone app development for the required use cases was also specified. The OBU and smartphone app specifications also included the interface to the C-ITS-S for C-ITS services via cellular/IP networks. The OBUs and smartphone app were required to log all application data exchanged with other C-ITS stations and upload the log data to a central data storage for evaluation.
After contracts were awarded, an extended period of design development with the appointed contractors was necessary to: 1) understand the maturity/level of compliance of each of the C-ITS key system components; 2) set out the necessary tasks to achieve compliance or, where necessary, to develop alternative solutions; 3) identify the steps to develop the necessary interfaces between system components; and 4) prepare an outline testing strategy including end to end integration of all system components.
The testing strategy involved individual functionality testing and validation of each C-ITS system component. A cycle of ‘define-develop-test’ was followed until the expected level of performance was achieved. As a result of testing, new or modified requirements were added to meet the expected performance. Should new requirements impact the interoperability of the equipment/functionalities/services the change needs to be aligned across the end-to-end chain – this requires close collaboration between contractors and the client representatives throughout all the stages of the pilot.
The system also enabled use cases to be operated based on simulated events, thereby providing greater flexibility to evaluate certain use cases that operationally would have been challenging, e.g. emergency electronic brake light.
3 Evaluation
A series of evaluation questions were developed covering a range of technical (e.g. system performance etc.) and impact related aspects of C-ITS (quantitative and qualitative assessment as a result of behaviour change). These questions sought to clarify a wide range of C-ITS uncertainties through the course of the pilot. The data required to answer these questions was identified, along with key performance indicators, e.g. vehicle speed, acceleration/deceleration, location.
Understanding desired outcomes and data specifics at the beginning of the pilot enables evaluation requirements to be incorporated into the relevant specifications, e.g. specific data capture or, the ability to administer HMI ‘off’ or ‘on’ conditions for the comparison of ‘baseline’ and ‘treatment’ data.
A key part of the evaluation was to help understand how effective C-ITS might be in reducing collisions, improving journey times and cutting carbon emissions. The design of the pilot focused on developing systems and tools to answer these evaluation questions, e.g., the GDPR implications of the type of data needed will affect system design decisions (outlined in the data management section) and how the data analyst may want to process data to understand how a driver changes their behaviour based on receiving C-ITS information. In addition, microsimulation traffic modelling tools can be used to understand the impact of C-ITS at different levels of market penetration. Ireland has developed a model to assess the impact of a number of use cases. It is planned to refine the driver behaviour parameters within the model, based on empirical evidence gained from field data, to provide extra confidence in the results.
University College Cork and South East Technological University are providing expertise in supporting some of the more technical, research orientated evaluation questions on communications performance and data security and privacy. Engaging with these academic institutions to advance areas of research will fill gaps in understanding and help inform TII when considering communication infrastructure performance and scalability, as well as identifying their role supporting safe and secure data exchange.
4 Legal and Ethical
Central to the success of any pilot is the effective management of ethical and legal issues, encompassing, data governance, GDPR compliance, equipment certification, equipment installation liabilities, legal disclaimers and insurance related matters.
Setting out the risks associated with implementing the pilot is key to progressing and informing discussions with stakeholders such as TII’s insurance and legal representatives. To that end, a Safety plan was prepared, informed by relevant TII publications, standards, and other C-Roads tried and tested approaches to safety risk assessment. The plan included a range of measures to reduce the risks associated with trialing C-ITS technology on public roads to as low as reasonably practicable.
The early identification of evaluation data requirements supported the development of a data protection impact assessment (DPIA) and a range of measures to facilitate a GDPR compliant pilot. Appropriate lawful bases were identified for the processing of personal data and advice from lawyers and insurance professionals identified relevant risks and appropriate mitigation measures for the project team to implement.
To address specific equipment installation and participant related liabilities, a range of assessments were undertaken. Firstly, to assess whether the various contracts in place with the providers of OBUs and the entity installing the OBUs were robust (i.e. did the contracts have appropriate clauses and warranties around performing services with reasonable skill and care, products supplied are fit for purpose and that they require the contractors to maintain and evidence appropriate insurances etc.). Followed by an assessment of whether participants using the OBU/HMI or the smartphone app could sign a legal disclaimer of the type usually used by similar apps such as Waze/GoogleMaps. Finally, an assessment of whether participants having an OBU installed in the car have: 1) signed a consent form acknowledging such installation and accepting any associated risks; and 2) notified their own insurers that the OBU is installed to ensure that the participant’s insurance is still valid and not affected by the addition to the vehicle.
Participants were required to give their consent to the processing of personal data and accept a set of terms and conditions that encompassed all of the above in order for them to be eligible to participate.
5 Data Management
An understanding of what data is needed, and its sensitivities should be established as soon as possible. The identification of data requirements to answer the evaluation questions provided a good initial steer. As personal data was needed, it was necessary to prepare a DPIA. The DPIA described a process to identify risks of processing personal data and to minimise these risks as far and as early as possible.
It was necessary to identify the legal basis for the processing of personal data and to understand any secondary implications e.g. as consent was part of the legal basis, then the system needed to be able to handle the identification and selection of an individual’s data should they want access or delete it if they wish to withdraw from the pilot.
Developing a system that you want to learn from as part of a monitoring and evaluation campaign, imposes new data management/handling functionality on systems and processes that typically providers of operational systems do not provide. System providers naturally want to limit the collection of personal data and the overhead associated with its storage. Managing this tension was key to enabling a robust evaluation.
Two different data platforms were developed to support the Irish national pilot. One to manage the administrative side of pilot participation and the other to store log data to enable the data analysis to pilot operations and answer evaluation questions.
6 Pilot Participants
Two types of participants were involved: 1) contractors and design team members to support the testing of C-ITS system by performing a series of on-road drive tests; and 2) a representative mix of road users from the public to measure the impact of the pilot and to determine how effective connected vehicle services are in terms of improving safety, traffic efficiency and reducing carbon emissions.
A social research company was appointed to assist with the marketing, advertisement and recruitment of members of the public to participate in the pilot. A questionnaire was designed to identify eligible participants based on a range of criteria, such as journey frequency (regular journeys on the TEN-T network), demographic (representative range of age groups), gender, work status etc., vehicle type (representative vehicle mix), geographic spread (where RSUs are deployed and where there will likely be a prevalence of C-ITS events). In addition, the participants’ preferred device type, i.e. OBU or smartphone was ascertained.
Recruited participants had to complete a registration process, administered through a web platform. This entailed reviewing information on what to expect, key safety related information, OBU/smartphone app user guides, consent agreement, data protection notice and TII’s terms and conditions. The last mandatory step in the registration process was to complete a user acceptability questionnaire. To maintain participants’ cooperation during the data acquisition phase (up to 12 months) and maximise data collection for evaluation purposes, participants were given the opportunity to opt into a points-based reward program. The program was developed to maintain participation without encouraging additional journeys.
7 Managing Unforeseen Challenges
Throughout the preparing stages of this pilot, there have been many unforeseen challenges. Perhaps most notably was the complexity associated with integrating C-ITS into a live traffic management environment and the level of testing required. From a pure pilot perspective the level of testing was disproportionate to the scale at which services were deployed and the very nature of a pilot – to learn from its implementation, make refinements and redeploy. However, from a live traffic management operations perspective, with C-ITS being integrated, it was treated as a full operational system and underwent a commensurate level of testing.
Another unforeseen challenge was the need to support a change in thinking from a road operators perspective, from how traditional ITS schemes inform drivers, i.e. fixed information points on the network (gantry locations, VMS sites) providing limited information on speed, lane closures, VMS free text, to C-ITS, which is event based, that is to say that wherever an event occurs on the network, provided it is identified, advance information can be provided to the driver at any point on the network. And that C-ITS is not about mirroring extant settings on VMS and message displays on gantries, whilst there are use cases capable of achieving this (a short-term fix), the notion of C-ITS should not be limited based on where roadside infrastructure is currently installed.
Lastly, there was an unforeseen challenge in harmonizing in-vehicle service presentation with road-side message displays. Service presentation is outside the scope of C-Roads, as it is typically left to service providers and OEMs. However, TII were keen to harmonise C-ITS displays with roadside signage to provide a consistent experience for users and to minimise any perceived confusion for drivers. To achieve this, contactors changed pictograms from signs defined in the Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals to Irish specific pictograms based on the Irish Road Signs Manual.
8 Conclusions
This paper has described how TII has implemented a large scale national pilot, including lessons learned, guidance and considerations that may offer some valuable insight to other operators looking to implement something similar.
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
