C-ITS national harmonisation and pre-deployment research

Co-operative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS) technology enables road users and infrastructure to communicate with each other, sharing information about road conditions, disruptions, traffic flow, and safety incidents.

C-ITS has been proven to have the potential to provide significant safety benefits by detecting and providing advanced warning to drivers to prevent incidents and improve efficiency of transport networks. C-ITS needs alignment amongst governments and industry for harmonised deployment to realise these benefits in Australia.

This project involves uplifting around 30 intersections across five key corridors within the Australian Integrated Multimodal Ecosystem (AIMES) testbed (Melbourne, Victoria) with the advanced sensing and communication capability to continually transmit live information about traffic and safety for road users.

Deploying C-ITS at scale in a real-world busy urban environment will allow assessment of benefits, deployment considerations and options, and provide recommendations that could support Australian’s road authorities’ adoption of C-ITS in a nationally harmonised manner.

The research will primarily focus on short-range ITS-G5 technology, which is already installed in the AIMES testbed and in line with European standards, however long-range C-ITS will also be considered within the AIMES testbed and other road contexts.

Participants

• Department of Transport and Planning (Victoria)
• Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts
• Department of Transport and Main Roads (Queensland)
• Transport for NSW
• Department for Infrastructure and Transport (SA)
• Main Roads Western Australia
• Transport Accident Commission
• ITS Australia
• University of Melbourne

Project background

Background and context

Australian governments have the shared targets of halving road deaths by 2030 and achieving zero road deaths by 2050, as well as reaching a target of net-zero emissions by 2050. C-ITS technology has real potential to assist in these endeavours.

C-ITS involves technologies for vehicle connectivity and communication with other vehicles (V2V), with infrastructure (V2I), with networks (V2N) and with other entities such as motorcycles, pedal cycles, public transport, emergency vehicles, and pedestrians (V2X).

These communications are designed to enable connected vehicles and infrastructure to deliver a range of benefits, particularly in road safety (reducing crash frequency and severity) and traffic network performance (reducing congestion), as well as in energy efficiency and emissions reduction.

Furthermore, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and edge computing advancements have recently progressed, allowing potentially for improved sensing, reacting, and pre-empting for traffic management and safety.

There is now an evident consensus within the global ITS community that C-ITS technology can deliver these benefits, particularly for road safety and increasingly when deployed at scale. This is supported by numerous use cases for connected vehicles that have been trialled and simulated by government-endorsed agencies, industry, and academia (e.g the Ipswich Connected Vehicle Project). Some international markets are already deploying C-ITS enabled infrastructure and supporting security architecture at scale, notably Japan and parts of Europe.

C-ITS is a collaborative deployment requiring both government and industry to capture the benefits for road users. This was also highlighted in the Centre for Connected and Automated Transport (CCAT) report Transport in transition: Preparing for a connected, automated, and sustainable future – Learnings from the CCAT International Outreach.

Australia’s C-ITS environment is dependent on key international vehicle markets and without aligned approaches and investment, deployment of a bespoke C-ITS system could become disjointed and ultimately less effective for road users. Equally, without market alignment, Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) may avoid importing C-ITS equipped vehicles due to the low value offering to customers.

A nationally harmonised approach to C-ITS could be informed by practical and quantified understanding of:

1. the extent of benefits that can be delivered by C-ITS;
2. quantifiable measures of effectiveness for these emerging technologies in safety and network efficiency improvements; and
3. the operational implications and challenges for integrating C-ITS with live traffic environments, back-end systems, ITS networks and integrating across a range of IoT devices.

C-ITS standards

Where possible or appropriate, the Australian Design Rules (ADRs) are harmonised with United Nations Regulations. Also, where possible or appropriate, the ADRs include standards from other markets or countries as alternative standards, including Japanese Industrial Standards, US Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) or European Union regulations.

Currently, international standards for short-range C-ITS are not interoperable and, similar to Europe, Australia’s alignment has not been settled. Although Australia tends to align with European approaches to C-ITS where possible, there is a risk that waiting for the technology standards to ‘settle’ or for future generations of technology to be deployed will result in missed opportunities for government agencies to upskill, prepare back-end systems, understand deployment, and ultimately delay the safety and efficiency benefits on Australia’s transport networks. Conversely, there are also risks in investing in technology when the future path is not yet clear, potentially resulting in stranded assets.

Project overview

This project aims to conduct a comprehensive deployment of short-range (focussing on ITS-G5) for traffic management and multimodal use cases at the network level. This will be undertaken in collaboration with the University of Melbourne and the Australian Integrated Multimodal Ecosystem (AIMES).

AIMES works with a range of public and private sector partners to test new technology and data systems within an on-road test environment across 80 intersections and around 100 total kilometres of road in Melbourne, Victoria. The project will focus on ITS-G5 technology as this is already installed in AIMES and will be more cost-effective.

The project will also consider long-range C-ITS within AIMES and other road contexts such as highways and rural roads.

Location of the Australian Integrated Multimodal Ecosystem (AIMES) testbed

The pre-deployment research involves around 30 intersections across five key corridors with the capability to serve as advanced intelligent cores for traffic and safety monitoring and transmit continuous live information for road users and intelligence for traffic control.

There has been a significant investment in both C-ITS and ITS devices along these corridors which will be used to ensure a cost-effective deployment. These corridors present a range of varying transport scenarios including heavy cross-city traffic, principal freight routes, pedestrianised intersections, busy cycling corridors, and high patronage bus and tram routes.

More than 60 Victorian Department of Transport and Planning (DTP), university and council fleet vehicles, buses, and potentially some private vehicles, will also be retrofitted to receive information. Data management and security for the project will leverage the Central ITS facility (C-ITS-F) and Security Credential Management System (SCMS) developed by iMOVE and the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads (TMR) through TMR’s Cooperative and Automated Vehicle Initiative (CAVI).

Implementing this technology at scale in a live, on-road network environment will enable project participants to gather rich data on implementation considerations and experiment with the effectiveness of connected vehicles in traffic management in a real-world setting. This data will help inform future policy decisions and infrastructure investments, notably learnings to assist with developing early regulatory frameworks that can help guide industry development.

The proposed deployment aligns strategically with initiatives such as the Principles for a National Approach to C-ITS in Australia and work being undertaken by the Austroads Future Vehicles and Technology Taskforce, as well as the Learnings from the CCAT Outreach 2023. It may also support actions in the National Land Transport Technology Action Plan 2020–23 and draft 2024-2027 National Connected and Automated Vehicle Action Plan.

An open Australian pilot of large scope will help position Australia to take a leadership role in fulfilment of C-ITS solutions. A critical driver for the collaboration of various state, federal and industry partners in this project is to consider their unique and overlapping ITS components that would integrate into a C-ITS deployment. By partnering a more wholistic view of current state, future state and the gap can be presented for infrastructure, data, and systems, that could inform deployments nationally.

Understanding and integrating this awareness may allow the AIMES testbed to be representative of broader conditions that an OEM could test its C-ITS equipped vehicles against.

This also contributes to improving the future pipeline of C-ITS enabled OEM technology provision and development, important for C-ITS deployment timelines, as noted by CCAT. Collaboration also provides the opportunity to incorporate other Australian test sites (such as the Future Mobility Testing and Research Centre at Cudal (NSW) – high speed rural, and the CAVI testing center at Mt Cotton (QLD) – peri-urban) that, in combination, would provide a comprehensive set of Australian conditions.

Project objectives

The key objective of the project is to provide a robust evidence base to support development of a harmonised national approach to C-ITS deployment in Australia. This seeks to address the problem statement framed by WSP in its Advice on Strategies to Support C-ITS Deployment – March 2022:

There is currently no harmonised C-ITS ecosystem available to all vehicle manufacturers and governments to share information that can deliver to all Australians the desired road safety, efficiency, sustainability, and accessibility benefits that these technologies have to offer.

Underlying this problem statement are several key questions:

• What is the level of government involvement and intervention required for deploying C-ITS? What are the advantages and disadvantages of maintaining the current wait-and-see approach?
• How does the advancement of international standards impact Australia? What are the benefits and drawbacks of aligning with a specific set of these standards?
• What types of decisions are necessary regarding the physical technology employed for short-range communications?

In addressing these questions and gaps, noting that road authorities already own and operate the majority of ITS equipment on road transport networks, the project seeks to inform four key research objectives with a focus on V2I communication:

1. Confirm transport safety benefits using C-ITS

• Implement defined C-ITS safety use cases on trial vehicles.
• Assess the influence of C-ITS on driver behaviour by performing field operational testing against a defined set of V2I and V2V safety use cases.
• Quantify the safety impact of C-ITS technology on driver behaviour.
• Introduce AI to support enrichment of data for C-ITS communications.
• Develop and apply a scientifically rigorous quantitative and qualitative test protocol.

2. Confirm operational efficiencies for C-ITS

• Assess the influence of C-ITS on vehicles such as public transport for operational efficiency.
• Assess the benefits of providing disruption information to vehicles to influence driver route decisions reducing travel times.
• Quantify the efficiency impact of C-ITS on driver behaviour.
• Develop and apply a scientifically rigorous quantitative and qualitative test protocol.

3. Advance C-ITS capability and understanding across all partners

• Integrate and test roadside and vehicle stations to understand interoperability with current signalling and ITS systems nationally.
• Use environments such as the Future Mobility Testing and Research Centre, CAVI and AIMES strategically to support the variety of testing requirements to support objectives 1 & 2.
• Develop an architecture to support integrating European standards.
• Validate interoperability of C-ITS message formats between SCATS, CAVI and STREAMS.
• Build C-ITS technical capability in DTP and associated partners.
• Establish C-ITS support capability in DTP and associated partners.
• Develop solutions to integrate C-ITS devices with other ITS devices and sensors including video analytics and AI.
• Develop processes, architectures, and designs to inform a future C-ITS network implementation.
• Develop processes, architectures, and designs to inform safe and secure future C-ITS implementation.

4. Support harmonisation of C-ITS nationally

• Provide decision-makers with the information needed to inform consideration/deployment of C-ITS.
• Assess the specific advantage of C-ITS over similar systems such as crowd-sourced app data.
• Assess benefit cost ratio (BCR) of C-ITS.
• Quantify the future capital and operational investment for national deployment and note any significant change to this across the duration of the project.
• Assess the installation, integration, and maintenance requirements.
• Assess the systems integration requirements.
• Provide input on national harmonisation to relevant bodies and groups.
• Working with OEMs to harmonise consistent standards of application.
• Assess the integration environment for a SCMS and the future need for this system at scale.
• Provide guidance for data quality and requirements to meet C-ITS use case needs.
• Assess and recommend options for long-range C-ITS use case support, and centre to centre communications (ie EU NAP) to support collaborative, cross-border and harmonsised data environment for CAVs to operate

Please note …

This page will be a living record of this project. As it matures, hits milestones, etc., we’ll continue to add information, links, images, interviews and more. Watch this space!