FRAME Forum discusses architecture extensions

Date: 14 September 2005

The newly created, ERTICO-coordinated FRAME Forum has held its first technical meeting on 4 July in Paris with the aim of gathering information from Forum members about what might be done to upgrade the European ITS Framework Architecture (EITSFA) in the domains of, Multi-modality in Freight & Fleet Management, Electronic Fee Collection and Public Transport. This information will be used as the starting point for the preparation of the proposed changes, which will be discussed at the second technical meeting later this year.

The meeting was hosted by the French Ministry and included representatives from Austria, France, Italy, Sweden, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Forum Chairman Jan Willem Tierolf (RWS) opened the meeting and gave the floor to presentations from national activities during the morning session and to Richard Bossom (STC) and Peter Jesty (PJCL) to lead the technical discussions during the afternoon.

Status report national activities
A presentation on the French ITS Architecture (ACTIF) was given by Patrick Malléjacq (DSCR) and Yannick Denis (CERTU). The current version of ACTIF (Version 4, released in November 2004) has been developed with a focus on first increasing user friendliness by standardising the layout of the Data Flow Diagrams and providing the tool (OSCAR) for architecture creation. The functional area for Freight and Fleet Management has also been re-written to reflect current thinking on how this area should be organised, showing the movement of freight from its origin to its destination, and highlighting all of the involved actors and the interactions between them.

A pro-active outreach programme has been adopted in which the benefits of using ACTIF are explained to local authorities. To demonstrate its use, ten case studies have been chosen which cover ACTIF’s various aspects.  So far, two of the case studies have been finished and the rest will be completed later in the year.

A presentation of the Italian ITS Architecture (ARTIST) was given by Luciano Marasco (Italian Ministry), who explained that that the current version of ARTIST is compatible with Version 3 of ACTIF. Changes were made in the Freight and Fleet Management Area in order to meet Italy's needs in relation to the handling of dangerous goods in multi-modal transport, the distribution of goods in urban areas and the integration of emergency management activities.

Reinhard Pfliegl (Via Donau) described the Telematics Master Plan Austria - that became public in 2004 – which contains the four principal topics of Efficiency, Safety, Quality and Benefits.  A full ITS Architecture for Austria will not be developed, but efforts will concentrate on those aspects that are the most cost-effective, in particular safety.

Christer Rydmell (SNRA) presented activities in Sweden which focus on safety (including SpeedAlert), effective commuter travel (both by car and by public transport), effective goods transport (including distance based road user charging), and quality assurance of data on roads and traffic. Support for the development of system architectures for specific projects is currently provided using a Design Handbook that was produced in 2003-4. This means that architectures are presently created on a project-by-project basis, but Mr Rydmell mentioned that in his opinion, there should be a national system architecture approach in the future.

A presentation on activities in the United Kingdom was given by Adrian Eaton (DfT). He mentioned that an initiative to develop a National ITS Technical Interoperability Framework is intended to start in the near future. Some issues which will be considered by the framework development include data exchange, the links between national and regional traffic control centres, and the boundaries between different ITS services and deployments. The framework will first examine policy issues and then look at the technical issues related to co-ordinated ITS deployment, hoping thereby to identify deployments that can bring immediate benefits.

Extensions to the European ITS Framework Architecture

The meeting’s technical discussion initially covered Freight and Fleet Management (Functional Area 8 of the EITSFA) and what issues the EITSFA should include. As ACTIF and ARTIST have done a lot of work in this area, it was decided that their work should be studied to see what could be proposed for the EITSFA. The results of work package 2 of the COMPRIS project on inland waterway information services and the results from the Euro-regional projects will also be studied, as these may provide guidance on the expected data exchange between vehicles and control centres across Europe.

Richard Bossom gave a short presentation on the contents of the Public Transport Management Area (FA4) of the EITSFA and its relationship with the revised version of the public transport reference data model (Transmodel). The EITSFA currently supports some of the facilities in Transmodel but not others.  Some of these un-supported facilities will be considered for inclusion in the Architecture update activities to better represent the way public transport operators work. The Forum also identified a problem in the arrangement of the functionality in Functional Area 4 that could make the development of the physical implementation difficult.  For example, interfaces to the public transport passenger were included in functions that did other things, but did not include the provision of information about schedules or facilities for the notification of emergency situations. In addition, there were no facilities for the payment of fares by anything other than electronic means, thus cash payment is not supported. It was agreed that a list of the proposed changes to EITSFA’s Functional Area 4 to rectify the above issues will be produced based on the results in Transmodel, ACTIF Version 4 and the work that had been done on specific architectures in the UK.

Peter Jesty introduced a discussion on the Electronic Fee Collection Area of the EITSFA (Functional Area 1), but due to the status of on-going activities and standardisation efforts in the field, it was decided that it was too early to propose any definite changes to the road user charging mechanisms included in this Area. The issue might be raised again at the second technical meeting, if some of the current activities have made sufficient progress.

Next steps
Richard Bossom and Peter Jesty will prepare proposals for version 4 of the EITSFA which will be reviewed at the next technical meeting. The results will be presented at the FRAME Forum General Assembly in early 2006.

The FRAME Forum is open to all public and private stakeholders involved in ITS Architecture Development.

For more information, please contact ERTICO Project and Development Manager Helge Sturesson