ETNITE

The impact of Imformation and Communications Technologies (ICT) on transport over the last twenty years has created demand for a “new breed” of professionals for which existing institutions, universities and professional training bodies are not well equipped to meet. A survey carried out by the EC-funded ROSETTA project about these issues revealed that:

• less than 12% of professionals now working in the field of ITS have had formal ITS training
• training facilities for those already working in the field are limited and focus on certain subject areas only
• few universities offer comprehensive ITS education – courses are mostly available at postgraduate level only and are spread across many different faculties
• there is no overall co-ordination of educational resources at the European level and resources are very unevenly spread across European countries
• there is a general lack of awareness of ITS and its potential

As a result, in Europe today there lacks the skills required to deal with the complex technical, organisational, and economic aspects involved in successful ITS projects. This includes a range of very different capacities needed for project design, testing, deployment and system maintenance. In addition, many key decision-makers – especially from the public authorities – lack a general awareness of the costs and benefits of ITS as well and the knowledge required to carry out strategic management tasks, such as calls for tender involving ITS.

Europe is not alone in this challenge. To counteract, the US Department of Transport-funded Professional Capacity Building Program was launched in 1996, and the CITE Consortium, offering web-based ITS courses, was set up in the 1990s. In the Asia-Pacific region, an Academic Network of Excellence was established in July 2002.

Building European ITS competence
In Europe, there is a great deal of valid ITS competence and experience, but at the present time, it is not being exploited in educational programmes. Both personal knowledge and important research results are under utilised or frankly lost due to the lack of a systematic mechanism for their dissemination. In order for Europe make the most of its acknowledged ITS expertise, it is crucial that knowledge resources are not wasted through dispersion of efforts and the sharing of knowledge and experience is extremely important. 

For example, the European Commission has been strongly supporting R&D projects in the ITS domain for many years. Through its eSafety initiative, it has been studying the ways to drastically reduce the number of victims of European road accidents, which amounts to 50,000 every year. In addition, hundreds of European private and public industries and organisations are working intensively in this field and extremely important projects are currently being carried out. Transferring this knowledge and results into the ITS education and training arena will bring lasting benefits for the future.