21-26 of October 2012: Co-Cities demonstrations at the 19th ITS World Congress in Vienna Validate mobility services with Co-Cities

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1 Newsletter Cooperative Cities extend and validate mobility services Issue 3 - Oct 2012 We welcome you to the third issue of the Co-Cities Newsletter with the primary aim to inform you about the project s presence at the 19th ITS World Congress in Vienna where you have the chance to take part in one of our demonstrations. The Co-Cities newsletters will be available in both pdf and accessible html format, from the project website: In this Issue: Co-Cities demonstrations at the 19th ITS World Congress in Vienna, October 2012 News from the Co-Cities piloting sites Status of Co-Cities technical development The Co-Cities PRIME initiative Co-Cities relevant events of October 2012: Co-Cities demonstrations at the 19th ITS World Congress in Vienna Validate mobility services with Co-Cities We invite you to take part in our Co-Cities demo tours and experience smart cooperative mobility services! Join us in Vienna at the 19th ITS World Congress where you will have the possibility to give feedback on actual traffic conditions in a real life environment via our Co-Cities mobile applications. Please register for one of our demo tours online at or at the Demo Launch Area. Demo tours start from the Co-Cities booth in the Demo Launch Area. Please note: you need a subway ticket for the demonstration. 1 Project website: For further information please contact the Co-Cities coordinator Alexander Froetscher AustriaTech Ltd. alexander.froetscher@austriatech.org Tel:

2 21-26 of October 2012: Co-Cities demonstrations at the 19th ITS World Congress in Vienna ITS WORLD CONGRESS IN VIENNA: From 22nd to 26th October 2012, ERTICO - ITS EUROPE, in close co-operation with its counterpart regional organisations and the Host organisation, is organising the 19th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems and Services (ITS) in Vienna, Austria. The ITS Congresses continue to be of increasing significance globally, while gathering over 300 exhibitors and 8,000 visitors from more than 60 countries worldwide, in the quest to share best practices and build reliable networks. Within the theme Smarter on the way, the Vienna ITS World Congress is going to deal with innovative systems for the improvement of mobility. The energy-efficient and environmentally-friendly transport policy using intelligent systems and services has continually proved to be of great importance in Europe and worldwide. Austria in particular is calling for an exceedingly high degree of well-balanced freight and passenger mobility using multimodality. Needless to say, it s the ideal place to host the 19th ITS World Congress - smarter on the way! The world of ITS is coming to Europe for the first time since 2009: hear the latest ideas and achievements directly from the leading experts from USA, Japan, Korea, China and many other countries. The event will address the hottest topics in smart transport in depth: this is the only congress in the world to include such a wide range of subjects, and the only occasion to get an overview of such a diverse variety of technologies, systems, services and actual deployments. The venue for ITS Vienna 2012 is the Messe Wien which is located very close to downtown Vienna. The main Demonstration Area is beside this Congress Centre where state of the art cooperative mobility services based on vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication will be demonstrated. 2

3 News from the Co-Cities piloting sites Co-Cities aims to extend and validate existing mobility services to improve current traffic information management in cities and urban areas. The novelty about the Co-Cities services is their cooperative feature permitting the end users to report their feedback to the traffic management. The Cooperative Cities delivers common traffic information services in European cities via the generation and collection of the necessary information and data directly from the involved transport operators in the area or region, exchange information between different actors via the In-time interface and enable the customisation to the needs of single user groups by the respective service provider and maintainer. Viewed from the perspective of cities and urban areas one of the main value propositions of Co- Cities is its mobile reference platform acting as a service assessment tool for cooperative mobility services implemented in the cities. Co-Cities will be tested in six different piloting cities where test users will have the opportunity to trial enhanced and real time travel and traffic information presented in an integrated and consumer friendly way. The benefits for the Co-Cities piloting cities are especially expected in the uptake of innovative ICT based mobility services for sustainable, energyefficient transport systems which respond to the challenges of growing transport volumes in the city centres. The involved cities envision improving their performance in the field of adaptive, dynamic traffic management services. City authorities expect to be able to adapt their traffic management and control plans faster than before, communicate changes dynamically to travellers and people on the move and enhance mobility in urban areas. Besides, cities will have the possibility to compare their validation experiences with the collected feedback from the users of the mobility services via the Co-Cities mobile reference platform. We asked our piloting cities directly about the benefits they expect from the project and which their interest was in joining the Co-Cities project. Read further to learn about the expectation and motivation of some of the project s piloting sites: Piloting activities in VIENNA ITS Vienna Region has already been a pilot city in the In-Time project. The Multi-modal Journey Planner (In-Time Service 17) is therefore already implemented and running. In Co-Cities the CAI will be extended and the implementation of the following feedback services is planned: Overall quality of service feedback Public transport feedback Traffic feedback Multimodal Journey Planner feedback Following the implementation and after full validation of the services users involvement activities will start. It is foreseen to promote Co- Cities via existing services such as implementing a banner on the website AnachB.at to promote Co-Cities and recruit users. Additionally, users will also be able to interact with ITS Vienna Region via the Co-Cities-Apps (feedback) and the ITS Vienna Region website ( support). Further activities (e.g. events) are subject to a more detailed 3

4 planning after the services are implemented, validated and applications by TISPs are available for download. For the city of Vienna the consequent benefits from joining the Co-Cities Project are: Usage of CAI interface, a service-oriented middleware infrastructure providing service interoperability features in the domains of mobility and traffic which allow Traffic Information Service Providers (TISPs) to operate their value added end-user services by easily accessing data and services from local providers. Optimization of the end-user services through the feedback loop. From the perspective of ITS Vienna Region the main benefit is the optimization of the end-user services (Multimodal Journey Planner) based on the feedback loop. ITS Vienna Region is especially interested in the following use cases: Feedback on Public Transport location and schedules: Validate dynamic and static information Dynamic cycling planning: Improve routing for cyclists Adaptive Real-Time Multimodal Journey Planning: Get detailed feedback for track segments to improve routing Feedback Road works: ITS Vienna Region is interested in getting end user feedback about road works to Improve impact information. Map Related use Case: Add missing POIs, Addresses Piloting activities in BILBAO Piloting activities in Bilbao will consist in the testing of public transport, parking and traffic services. Bilbao as a new participating city will test both In- Time services and Co-Cities feedback loop. The main interest of Bilbao in joining Co-Cities project is to enhance the existing mobility information services and improve the urban traffic management through the extension of Open Data traffic information services. During the last five years Bilbao Council has performed some small milestones in this sense and thanks to Co-Cities it will be possible to implement one standard platform which makes Bilbao s transport data available via a harmonised standardised open interface. This platform, currently available in several European cities, is capable of translating information from the native format to the In- Time standard and will ensure that every service provider can understand and interpret In-Time data and services, which is completely aligned with the Bilbao Council s strategy. The main benefits expected by Bilbao are as follows: 4

5 Improve the existing traffic information management providing citizens with enhanced travel information service offerings. Offer data via the harmonised standardised open interface ensuring that every service provider can understand and use In-Time data. Use the feedback loop from the users to the traffic management to react changing traffic conditions and adapting the traffic management faster than before, communicating changes dynamically to travellers. Add the cooperative mobility to transport and traffic services. Boost interoperability between geographical regions. Contribute to the objectives of improved road safety, increased energy efficiency and sustainability of transport in Bilbao. Piloting activities in TUSCANY REGION Piloting activities in the Tuscany Region will focus in testing the multimodel journey planner as well as the AVM (Automatic Vehicle Monitoring) services whereas the latter consists in sending the feedback from the drivers to the control room (traffic conditions, accidents, practicability of roads,...) The feedback functionalities will be able to contribute to the system s regional traffic information with data in real time, allowing the optimisation of the traffic management and local public transport models and ensuring a more effective and efficient programming. The regional administration of Tuscany envisions to organize a specific event for heads of municipalities and provinces as well as qualified professionals operators in order to show them a first demonstration of the potential application of the project. The overall objective of the event will be to present the project to interested parties including cities, vital for the post-project success, and to gather feedback before the end of project activities, so as to have a first test widespread on the territory. Furthermore, the regional Website (mobility section) will present the project s results and will advertise publicly the Co-Cities app for downloading in a special banner in order to support the user engagement efforts. The Tuscany Region participates in the project as a territory composed of several provincial capitals, which have different features and sizes. 5

6 Inclusion in a network of European cities working on infomobility is certainly an element of strong interest to our cities, allowing the exchange of technology and best practices to improve the systems of planning, programming, traffic management and local public transport. At the same time the Tuscany Region s characteristics as a piloting site allow the testing of project applications in different local contexts, extending the value of the results of the trial. The main benefit for the Tuscany Region is of course to implement the functionality of regional mobility information systems with the feedback functionalities, which will support to both improve the quality of information available and to get more real-time data about the state of the traffic, the presence of accidents and the practicability of the roads. 6

7 Status of technical developments In the first part of Year 2, the Co-Cities partners are committed in the development of the technical infrastructure necessary to start the demonstration phase in all piloting sites. This can be seen as a Project s turning point, with all developments completed and the real usage of the Co-Cities system, on the field to start. The Co-Cities infrastructure comprises the following basic elements: Systems and services available in local sites and operating in the domain of transport and traffic The Co-Cities Common Interface: a set of software components connected to local systems which enables interoperability between Cities and Service Providers. Traffic Information Service Providers (TISPs) which can connect to the Common Interface to provide services to the end users for all Co- Cities compliant sites A Reference Platform operating as Collecting, Monitoring, Validation and Evaluation System Reference. The development activities focus on three aspects. Each piloting site is technically supported by one or more partners who provides the technology necessary to set up the Common Interface. Partners Softeco and Telematix, in addition, are developing mobile applications and will then operate as Co-Cities TISPs. Another partner, Fluidtime, provides the technology for the Common Interface in Vienna Sites and is responsible at the same time for the development of the Reference Platform. Let s remind that the Common Interface enables a bidirectional interoperability between Cities and TISPs thanks to a number of service protocols whose purpose is to: 1. Unify different data/service formats used for transport and traffic information (like Journey Planning, Parking, Road Traffic, POI and Public Transport). 2. Define a common format for the provision of feedback data to the city. The two aspects have been considered together in order to create a consistent and effective technical specification which is the basis for the current software development. Feedbacks can be provided as new information generated by the user or as a feedback on the quality of data and services provided through the TISP apps. The Co-Cities technical specification is defined starting from In-Time which already formally defines the Common Interface for information provision. Basically, Co-Cities extends the specification by adding the necessary feedback definitions in a harmonized way together with the existing data and service specification. Transport and traffic information services were already in place in those sites already involved in In-Time: Munich, Vienna and, partially, Tuscany Region (Florence was a pilot site for In-Time) while in Bilbao, Prague and Reading a number of new information services has been set up along the indications of the technical specification. The local development of B2B feedback interfaces was, instead, a task for all sites. Specific B2B services allow data to be sent to a site and act in practice as a feedback receiver. Feedback 7

8 functionalities are available into TISPs mobile applications and each TISP can deploy a different approach to give users the opportunity to be collaborative. Once sent from the mobile device and received at destination, data can be stored and processed for different purposes like traffic analysis, improvement of data quality etc. Different technologies are used to develop B2B services (for both information and feedback provision) ranging from Open Source-based solutions -especially suitable for OGC WFS implementations- to proprietary implementations or extensions of existing transport and traffic processing systems. Every solution, developed in agreement with local administrations, fits the specific existing conditions and target needs but despite these differences, all sites exposes an interface accessible in a common way. The interoperability test phase concludes the implementation and is the key activity to assess the full Co-Cities compliance of all deployed interfaces. This is the necessary condition to get all systems ready for the demonstration phase where the Reference Platform developed, in turn, from the Co-Cities specs will be used to collect all usage data. Mobile applications to be shown during the 19th ITS World Congress in Vienna have been developed by Partners Softeco Sismat and Telematix. The first one is running on Android platform while the second runs on ios platform. These can operate as client apps for all present and future Co-Cities sites and show the full interoperability potential of the Co-Cities Common Interface. New Traffic data provided as a feedback using the Android mobile app Quality of service feedback functionality Android Mobile app 8

9 An example of processing of feedback data about the quality of the service Example of processing of Public Transport Quality Feedback 9

10 Co-Cities PRIME initiative Co-Cities PRIME (Provide Improved Mobility Services) is an initiative started by the project consortium to invite cities to share the experiences of cooperative mobility services and participate in the service roll-out in urban areas throughout Europe. What we offer? The Co-Cities consortium offers the city a service installation package - which is paid 50% by the city and 50% by the project consortium. The offer by the Co-Cities consortium includes: Technical installation, including: CAI set-up Set-up of adapters to the CAI Initial testing and validation of services Service start and operation What a city has to do? Apply for PRIME! Contact us via our specific section on PRIME on our website: or by sending an directly to a co-cities-prime@austriatech.at On site visit of a technical partner with demonstration of the reference platform and local assessment of available data and thereby possible services & benefit for city and citizens Co-Cities Partners PRIME Cities On site visit with check of available local systems, necessary to identify potential new services & benefit for city and citizens Set up of necessary software components of the CAI Initial testing and validation of services Decision to join PRIME initiative Set up of local adapters to the CAI Start of service operation Enjoy cooperative mobility services! 10

11 Co-Cities relevant EVENTS Co-Cities at the Annual Polis Conference (29-30 November 2012, Perugia (Italy) Polis presidency Perugia is the host of the 2012 Annual Polis Conference on November. On 28 November, the Polis Annual General Assembly (AGA) will take place (Polis members only) as well as the TIDE Launch Workshop, to which conference participants are invited. This year s conference will showcase many of the key topics explored recently by Polis within its thematic working groups and projects. These topics, proposed by Polis members, can be found in the list of topics in the call for speakers. Through the sessions, the audience will learn about trends, future plans and recommendations through presentations, statements and discussion. Each session will aim to offer a mix of contributions on current practice and future plans (in cities and regions), academic research and industry initiatives. Sessions will be delivered in different formats, including workshops, round-tables and short, focused presentation-style sessions. Co- Cities will be presented by one of the consortium partners in the parallel session on ITS to support public transport and soft modes. Read more: eu/publicevents/107/61/annual-polis- Conference-2012/ The 2nd SmartCity Expo & World Congress SMART THINKING November 2012, Barcelona (Spain) This event organized among others by Atos, partner of the Co-Cities consortium, will bring together key speakers and representatives of the leading organizations with the most innovative ideas in the world. The Congress will be an essential element to addresses issues such as rapid urban demographic growth, changing the current models of service provision and guaranteeing and improving the quality of life of urban inhabitants. The city of Barcelona, an innovative city and a pioneer in implementing sustainable policies, is the host of the Smart City Expo World Congress, a global benchmark and a unique event at which to learn, share, make contacts and find inspiration for developing the cities of the future This event is a unique congress at a global level which is spearheading the movement to develop smart communities that will drive forward innovative, sustainable cities. Bringing together the leading experts and representatives of the most innovative initiatives in the world. Structured around keynote speeches, round tables with key speakers and side events on topics such as energy, mobility, ICT, urban development, people and lifestyles, etc. Read more 11

12 CITIZENS CONNECT WITH YOUR CITY 12