TABLE OF CONTENTS Intelligent transportation systems (ITS), also meant as t ransport telematics systems, are electronic, information, and communication technologies and traffic engineering concepts used in an integrated way to better manage and improve the performance, efficiency, and safety of the transportation system. Since 1995, the ITS America and Department of Transportation have started to provide a clear vision of what industry and government should do about ITS [1].
GPS was a key technology for developing advanced ITS services. This was followed by the development of a coherent policy by government authorities [2, 3]. It is important to understand as well that the correlation among different user services for ITS operations is very tight. This means that some services can share the same physical, technological, and information infrastructure to reduce costs and improve performance. The first step was to define a service bundle in which each category of service can be grouped. Although not exhaustive, the bundle helps to segment the possible application of ITS. The list of the original 29 user services has been extended to the 33 ITS user services (Table 8.1) [3]. This list will change over time as user needs change and increase and new (and improved) technologies emerge. It is beyond the scope of this book to detail the ITS architectures and planning [4], but the role of satellite navigation on ITS will be explained through the example of developed applications and future trends. GPS is mainly...
