ITS are often deployed piecemeal due to local & regional differences. In urban and inter-urban areas and along the Trans-European Transport corridors a range of ITS are operating. However, access to reliable, coherent and complete information is missing on what is deployed where, how effectively it works and what lessons were learned. ITS Observatory helps solve this problem by offering an easily accessible, comprehensive one-stop-shop for information and insight on ITS deployment in Europe. It is an open knowledge base for use by and for the ITS Community. Content providers (e.g. ITS owners, decision makers, managers & suppliers) upload information about their ITS implementations, describing the location and type of ITS, whom to contact for more information and summarising any evaluation results. Users can search the knowledge base using popular keywords.
The ITS Observatory offers decision makers, businesses and stakeholders access to timely and reliable facts on existing and ongoing ITS implementation in Europe, as well as links to the best available information on deployment outcomes (e.g. impacts & benefits) to help them develop and apply ITS policy objectives and strategies.
The main objectives of the project were:
1. To combat fragmentation of knowledge about ITS through the creation of a comprehensive data set on the “what”, “where” and “who” of European ITS;
2. To support ITS deployment by creating an user friendly knowledge base, to help users find and compare results of research, pilots, deployment projects;
3. To create an interactive information marketplace with features to help support a dynamic ITS community of public authorities, system owners and suppliers, service providers and users.
The ITS Observatory promotes ITS deployment by increasing the visibility to potential customers and to solutions offered by suppliers, showing their impacts and benefits for the public sector.
The Observatory collects and communicates lessons learnt from previous projects, and has made a business plan for sustainable operation after the project. For EU-funded projects it can help bridge the gap to wider exploitation by public and private sectors, thus adding value to the original investment.
