intelligent transportation system (ITS)

Intelligent transportation system (ITS) is the application of sensing, analysis, control and communications technologies to ground transportation in order to improve safety, mobility and efficiency. ITS includes a wide range of applications that process and share information to ease congestion, improve traffic management, minimize environmental impact and increase the benefits of transportation to commercial users and the public in general.

ITS, which is part of the Internet of Things, includes vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) technology and incorporates both wireless and wire line communications-based information and electronics technologies. Wireless technology is used to connect vehicle information and location to other vehicles, other transportation modes (such as pedestrians or bicyclists), local infrastructure and remote infrastructure in the cloud.

ITS is having a significant effect on transportation in applications such as electronic toll collection, ramp meters, traffic light cameras, traffic-signal coordination, transit signal priority and traveler-information systems.The adoption of ITS is expected to increase in applications such as fleet monitoring, tolling management, ticket management, transportation pricing, telematics and traffic monitoring. Key beneficiaries of ITS safety improvements as well as the availability of real-time information and analytics are travelers, businesses and transportation agencies. Data from ITS also has homeland security applications.

Researchers at IDC project that global spending on connected vehicles will be $29.6 billion, and spending on ITS will be $16.5 billion by 2017. However, obstacles to ITS adoption include sluggish growth in global infrastructure and high installation costs. Other challenges lie in ensuring the security of highly connected technology; the same factors that make ITS attractive to users make it vulnerable to hacking and data breaches.