Project News: CVIS focuses on deployment

Date: 05 October 2007

Two workshops take a look at dismantling non-technical barriers to CVIS deployment.

The capability to link vehicles to the roadside and to each other through seamless communications channels creates many opportunities for far reaching innovations in the way the road network is used. A corresponding change in policy thinking and bridging the gap between infrastructure providers and operators and vehicle manufacturers to gain the co-operation needed require significant challenges to be addressed.

The ERTICO-coordinated CVIS project’s primary objectives are to demonstrate the feasibility of an open, interoperable technical solution that can support diverse information based applications. However, the project acknowledges that any use of CVIS raises a number of very broad non-technical issues. These areas are being studied within the Deployment Enablers (DEPN) subproject and have been the focus of several recent meetings.
 
Workshop on policy implications
A workshop on CVIS policy implications was held on 14 September 2007 with the objective of providing an overview of the main areas of policy with which CVIS will interact.

At the workshop policy makers were informed on where and how CVIS might impact transport, economic and other areas, while technology, product and service developers gained a better understand of the relationship of their developments to policy at European, national and local levels.

Subjects such as, “what might encourage an individual to allow their vehicle to be used as a data collection probe?” were looked at, as were policy questions relating to the ownership and sharing of data, safety and the environment.

Wide policy coordination
It was realised that policy impact of CVIS is wider than transport and needs to be considered at all levels; international, national and local. Creating and harmonising at the international level has the longest timescale but needs to be informed by what local transport policy areas CVIS plays a role in. Hence, the development of policy needs to be an iterative process.

The workshop concluded that the complexity of the policy environment of CVIS creates a major challenge. There has to be coordination between those who have a policy influence in all related areas. The institutions and mechanisms to achieve this have yet to be devised and put in place. This must be addressed otherwise a lack of policy and policy coordination could become a significant barrier to deployment.

Workshop on business cases for cooperative systems
ERTICO and ERTICO Partner LogicaCMG jointly held a workshop on 29 June 2007 as part of the DEPN subproject.

The main goal of the workshop was to explain the concepts of value engineering, business modeling and how to create business cases for cooperative systems. The workshop model was chosen to exchange ideas and thoughts regarding commercial issues, business cases and business models.

Around 40 people attended the event representing various stakeholders in and around cooperative systems, traffic and transport.

Background of the workshop
In the past, there have been many technological developments in the area of traffic and transport: some successful, others with little or no impact. The main reason for unsuccessful initiatives can be traced to an inadequate business model.

Technical innovations, no matter how pioneering, are doomed to fail if there is no one willing to pay for them. On the other hand, there are plenty of examples of standard technical developments that have enjoyed market success thanks to a profitable business case. Developments in cooperative systems will not be any different - a successful business case for any CVIS result is instrumental for market success.

The presentations
Presentations at the workshop were both theoretical and applicative. In the theoretical section, presented by Henk-Jan Booiman of LogicaCMG, three subjects of interest were elaborated:

• The increased complexity of value engineering as a result of the shift from traditional value chains to value networks.
• The need for elaborated business model ontology to describe and validate the more complex business models built around those value networks.
• The construction of business cases and a global application of the presented theory in relation to cooperative systems.

In the applicative section, ERTICO Partners Thomas Miller, the Flemish government, Bosch Blaupunkt, Telecom Italia, and Siemens AG presented their vision on the commercial aspects of cooperative systems.

The workshop then concluded with an open discussion.

Next steps
The decomposition of services into sub-services will form the basis for the creation of the value chains and business models. Together with the results of the workshop the services will be further elaborated. These activities will finally result in value engineering models that show which sub-services are exchanged between stakeholders and how the money flow could be between the same stakeholders and the economic validation of those models.

For further information regarding the CVIS project, DEPN subproject or the two workshops, please contact ERTICO Project Associate Julie Castermans.