Vehicle and traffic management

The tools of navigation serve a broad spectrum of applications. One of the main topics refers to the wide range of vehicle and traffic management, which is characterized by a high degree of interdisciplinarity. The navigational components are correlated with tools of transportation and traffic sciences, telematics, geoinformatics, and of many other disciplines. Navigation is inherent in any kind of traffic and transportation. For example, questions like “where am I?” and “how to go?” are associated with the main tasks of navigation, namely, positioning and guidance of individual vehicles or a collective of vehicles. In addition, vehicle and traffic management requires an adequate infrastructure for processing and transmitting traffic-related data and information. In this respect, (traffic) telematics contributes essentially to the success of a traffic management system. Covering topics of telecommunications as well as informatics, telematics strongly cooperates with geoinformatics, which mainly focuses on the collection, administration, evaluation, and visualization of geographic data. In connection with traffic telematics, geographical information systems (GIS) handle data and information about vehicles and objects of the traffic infrastructure associated with a position or location on land, at sea, or in the air. Meanwhile, a good deal of the GIS applications cover topics of traffic and transportation.