ITS Awareness
Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) explore the study of enhanced transportation systems management and operations for safety improvement and public service efficiency. The major content of ITS includes understanding its elements, functions, and significance. Additionally, the course aims at understanding the stakeholders, their roles, and interaction among them. A learner also ought to have a clear understanding of the types of ITS and the significance of integrating ITS systems within a region. Finally, the ITS awareness content includes a case study and self-exploration of inline data to understand ITS operations, security, and integration (Dimitrakopoulos, George & Panagiotis, 77).
ITS integrates the current technology into transportation structure where public service, business, cargo and private vehicles can be monitored intelligently from a remote monitor. In such exploration, the department of road transportation ensures safety by considering factors such as weather, vehicle speed, and infrastructure conditions among others. Users of ITS apply it in traffic management, road enforcements, emergency operations, collision avoidance, and for traffic light controls for traffic control.
Interoperability: ITS Systems Architecture and Standards
The course content of system interoperability and standards include understanding the systems engineering basic concept, architecture definition, standards concepts, users and service requirements, logical architecture, regional applications and planning the local system. The systems forming the ITS architecture include a national framework including users, data, and other crucial entities that the system incorporates. On the other hand, standards for developing ITS infrastructures include data elements, message set and communication profile standards (Dimitrakopoulos et al., 79). Standards of data elements ensure essential information flow within the framework, for example, the system must understand links, locations, numbering systems and end nodes. Moreover, standards about message set define the information contained in a data packet under transmission. Lastly, communication profile standards ensure that the transmitted information communicates among a wide range of devices. The architecture and standards of the ITS systems are vital in understanding the relationships and various communications between travelers, centers, vehicles and fields of operations. The architecture ensures travelers information access and support through a mobile communication, vehicle-to-vehicle, fixed points and short range communications.
Improving Highway Safety with ITS
The Intelligent Transportation System helps to improve highway safety. The course content includes determining the highway safety problems and how to overcome them by outlining the ITS and USDOT programs. The content also illustrates the highway and street safety urgencies and how ITS improves traffic operations and highway safety through work zones. Most importantly, both individual and organizational actions are crucial for safety planning and collaborations to enable improved highway safety.
The course was therefore designed to enlighten users on the benefits of using ITS for applications to improve highway safety. The usefulness of the ITS application is to accelerate the highway safety. Highway safety is critical in reducing accidents and fatalities along the highways. Crashes differ from state to state and therefore, it is vital to perform Road Safety Audits (RSA), Safety Planning, Crash Analysis and High Accident Location Analyses (Dimitrakopoulos et al., 80). ITS enhance safety by avoiding collisions in interchanges and intersections, performs speed management, updates road weather, defines work zones, improves incidence reaction and mitigation.
Deploying ITS: Strategic Planning and Implementation
Before deploying an ITS, it is crucial to conduct a strategic system planning to reduce expenditure and wastages. Planning entails gathering the ITS requirements, assessment and design, ITS development, testing and ultimately deploying the results. It is critical to invest heavily at the requirement stage to avoid massive costs expenditure at the ITS deployment stage. ITS strategic planning plans on management measures, services that the project would deliver and the detailed architectural design for the particular project. Finally, to come up with an effective system, an individual can conduct a robust planning approach of ITS systems which would Help in avoiding pitfalls associated with poor strategies.
Roles of the Public & Private Sectors in ITS: Cooperative Partnerships
The course discussed partnership as a vital component of the ITS system. The course described the many forms that private and public cooperation may take in partnership and critical factors to successful partnerships. Partnership is a main requirement of an ITS deployment. Risks are distributed, and costs are effectively shared. Furthermore, sharing of skills and knowledge during partnership improves the performance of the system. Often, private sectors play the majority of public infrastructure development roles. However, the public sector majorly supports the development by financing the projects. Both the sectors have the humanitarian goal; however, private sectors are often oriented towards making money (Dimitrakopoulos et al., 82). Since every ITS situations are unique and divergent, partners can share and gain previous experiences. For successful establishment of the partnership, teamwork, tenacity, trust, and time are virtues that require upholding.
Weather Responsive Traffic Management (WRTM)
WRTM uses both weather and traffic operations information to improve management of traffic during weather associated conditions. Traffic managers and workers can employ effective and proactive responses to weather events that emerge. WRTM includes data and tools that enhance incidental awareness of the current weather conditions that reduce the effective transportation systems. Regarding the above, WRTM provided an effective support and decision-making tool. Finally, it put emphasis on links between the appropriate driver behavior and response to weather to enhance safety and mobility. The WRTM may; however, experience challenges due to the insufficiency of road weather data, seasonal weather variability from year to year, lack of original data illustrating the travel safety and insufficient time for evaluating WRTM.
Careers in ITS
There are very many careers that a person can specialize in after accomplishing an ITS course work. These careers make an individual illegible to work in both private and public sectors. ITS is; mainly, interdisciplinary and would fail if all designs and implementations are conducted by an engineer. Career opportunities in ITS include GIS experts, IT experts, engineers, economists, and weather forecasts (Dimitrakopoulos et al., 83). All the experts have their roles without which failure is likely to occur.
Work Cited
Dimitrakopoulos, George, and Panagiotis Demestichas. “Intelligent transportation systems.” Vehicular Technology Magazine, IEEE 5.1 (2010): 77-84.
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