ITS in Thailand

ITS in Thailand A field of transportation is known as a civil's or a traffic engineer's job which the major infrastructure mostly belongs to the ministry of transport. However, nowadays the information and communication technologies (ICT) are embedded to various infrastructures including transportation.

Therefore a civil engineer has to work closely with a computer engineer meanwhile the ministry of transport has to plan the infrastructure together with the ministry of ICT. The integration of ICT technologies to the transportation area in many countries has been proved that it is able to improve the efficiency of transportation in term of Safety/Security, Comfort/Convenience and Environment friendly. For example, the old paradigm to solve the traffic congestion problem is to construct a crossing bridge over the intersection. We found that the congestion occurs on the crossing bridge itself since other intersections do not have bridges. To solve the problem with hard construction is no longer the smart solution. Here comes the ICT role of intelligent. Australian applies the ICT to the traffic control system called a SCAT, Sydney Coordinated Adaptive Traffic System, to operate the whole traffic lights automatically. The SCAT equips with sensor on the road to count vehicles at each intersection before sending the data via communication link to the computer center. The center adapts the timing of traffic signals in the network according to the traffic volume. The SCAT improves the flow of the traffic smartly. A general term of an ICT system that applies to the transportation is called an Intelligent Transport System or ITS. Comfort & Convenience

C&C Safety & Security

Environment & Efficiency

S&S

E&E Human

Information Communication Technology InfraStructure

Vehicle

Figure 1. ITS diagram.

The ITS composes of three components; a human, an infrastructure and a vehicle as shown in Figure 1. A human component could be a driver, a passenger, a pedestrian or a transport operator. An infrastructure means the transport infrastructure and ICT equipment like inductive loop, CCTV, fiber optic, Computer center and etc. A vehicle could be boat or aircraft but currently ITS is more focusing on a road transport. These components are linked together by an ICT to form an intelligent system with the purpose to improve safety/security, comfort/convenience and environment/efficiency.

Here are examples:

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To drivers on the road, ITS can improve quality of travel by assisting drivers to find a faster route.

Since the on-board unit can communicate with data center, it receives real-time traffic information and finds the route that avoids congestion or accident.

Source http://www.prestonbus.co.uk –

Public Transport users can enjoy shorter bus travel time, and less worry through public transport information. They will know when their bus is arriving. Operators of bus services can have better management.

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Electronic Road Pricing for operator. A road can detect which car is passing into the city center. It can be introduced and give total, worry-free solution for the regulation.

Why do we need “ITS” in Thailand?

ITS has been adopted in developed countries for a decade as we have seen the ITS organizations around the globe such as ITS America, ITS Canada, ITS Australia, ITS Japan, Ertico (ITS Europe) and etc. In the developing country like Thailand, we realized the advent and the benefit of ITS applications.

We then joined the Asia Pacific ITS Forum in 2006. The forum contains 14 membership-countries in Asia Pacific including India (which is not in Pacific). The forum arranges a major ITS conference and exhibition annually and officially joins ITS World Congress, the largest annual ITS event.

Although the ITS is a new term, in the past decade, there has been considerable investment over one billion Baht in ITS deployment in Thailand. However, we did not name it an ITS project and most projects are lack of integration. Some are duplicated! They aims to serve individual needs of each agency. With this gap in cooperation, the Ministry of transport has drafted the national ITS master plan for 2006-2015. A vision is to have the intelligent transport and traffic system that conform to the international standard and support Ministry of Transport strategy in providing efficient operation and management of transportation and traffic system for the country. The master plan's strategic direction covers six areas of ITS including a traveler information, a traffic management, a commercial vehicle fleet, a public transport, a safety/security and an electronic payment. In order to drive the strategic areas, the master plan defines seven capacity building plans; 1. establish an institutional framework for ITS, 2. improve awareness and understanding of the benefits of ITS, 3. facilitate development of ITS expertise, 4. undertake ITS research and development, 5. facilitate ITS partnerships and recognize linkages with other sectors, 6. ensure the availability of appropriated tools and data, and 7. encourage international cooperation on ITS. The plan also set an investment framework to reduce duplication and integrate systems by concerned agencies into one unified transport service for the region.

The role of NECTEC in ITS As stated previously that ITS is the integration between ICT and transportation. NECTEC, the

national electronics and computer technology center, acting as the ICT R&D for the government, plays the major role to support ITS technologies. In 2005, NECTEC has launched the ITS program with the goal to push local ITS technologies to the industry. So far the ITS program has facilitated collaboration among relate stakeholders in ITS society, announced Thai ITS standard, enhanced business opportunity and conducted joint research among a government sector, a private sector and an academic sector through grants and technology transfer programs. However, the ITS program has a limited budget. We have to hand over a prototype to the government or a private sector who will deploy and evaluate the prototype. Figure x show the involvement of three stakeholders, an academic/research institute, a government and a private company, in the ITS application development.

Basic/ Platform/ Feasibility

Applied R&D

Deployment/ Pilot

Evaluation

Academic/ Research Institute Government/ Infrastructure Owner Private Sector

- The role in R&D We studied the Master plan and prioritized technologies needed by the country. Then we come out with two major focusing areas, a traveler Information and a road safety. In the beginning, we started defining a technology road map, building an infrastructure and defining a standard. The technology road map indicates us a trend of applications, customers and needed technologies. All projects granted by NECTEC have to conform the direction stated in the technology road map. Figure x presents the technologies required in ITS applications including sensing, communication, processing and display technologies. It is a guideline for research direction. Some technologies are obsolete, some are mature, some are open for public use and some are not. We have to build our own technologies in order to complete with others.

After we have a clear vision of the road map and a rigid infrastructure, in the second and the third year, we begin to introduce applications to public. The traveler information web, http://traffic.thai.net has been announced during Songkran holidays in the mid of April 2007 when people traveled back to their hometown and the highways were congested. The ITS program installed 11 image processing camera along the highway and provided hand held devices for highway patrol to report a real-time traffic incident. The web page was successfully promoted the benefit and awareness of ITS technologies to the public in such that a traveler can plan the trip ahead with live traffic information.

About the infrastructure, we emphasize in the sensor technologies to gain traffic data on the road. Our two highlight projects are a wireless vehicle monitoring network and a traffic image processing software. The wireless vehicle monitoring network provides an easy and low-cost installation, adaptable system for traffic monitoring using a small magnetic sensor node. The node installed in the mid of lane will send speed, type and volume of vehicle to the server node on the roadside via wireless communication.

The traffic image processing software provides us the speed and flow of traffic. The software is embedded to the CCTV unit together with a wireless broadband communication function. Therefore the unit can install in any location without cable wiring. Today, we installed 11 CCTV units around inter-city highways and display traffic report in the http://traffic.thai.net .

What we expect from the ITS research is to understand the evolution of transport technology, to make wise use of technology, to create our own innovative solution and to lower the expense for the industry.

The role to build-up ITS community Since ITS program has been one of the programs under NECTEC/NSTDA, we had got an idea to found up a place to collaborate among groups of ITS experts from Government, Private, and Academic Sectors for ITS knowledge exchange and be ITS center of the nation. So thus, “ITS Forum” had founded up to with the mission as following: 1. To mutually develop technology and roadmap, and set up ITS policy by all related parties, 2. To jointly build up a place for all related parties to share knowledge and comments about traffic and transportation problem management and planning, 3. To jointly produce documents and create activities for proper bringing out ITS knowledge and understanding to general public and 4. To jointly found ITS association to be a networking center of Thailand ITS stakeholders.

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In the Forum, NECTEC had played its role as a key person to run the Forum’s activities to be an ITS representative of the country, to enhance proper application for traffic and transportation management, and to bring about alliances among related organizations by meeting up in every two months at The Office of Transport and Traffic Policy and Planning (OTP).

After NECTEC had run as the center of ITS Forum for 3 years (since September, 2005), the forum members had agreed to broaden their scope of ITS activities for more domestic and international alliances. Therefore, “Thai ITS Association” or “ITS-Thailand” has been founded up and officially registered since February, 2008. The association has got its vision and mission as following:

Vision: “Toward a better life with ITS” Mission 1. To participate in developing the ITS Technology, Roadmap, and related Policy, 2. To be a centre to share knowledge and ITS information, 3. To educate and promote ITS to the public, 4. To create social awareness for safe, comfortable, and environmental friendly society, 5. To be a linkage between ITS Stakeholders, and 6. To enhance cooperation among Government, Private, & Academia sectors as well as International organizations.

In term of running the association, ITS-Thailand has been composed of members, which come from 3 sectors including Government, Private, and Academic sectors. The following will be samples of the members from the 3 sectors:

Government 1. NECTEC

Private 1. Thai Automotive Industry

Academic 1. Chulalongkorn University

Association 2. Office of Transport and Traffic Policy and Planning 3. Bangkok Metropolitan Administrations 4. Royal Thai Police

2. Automotive Industry Club of the

2. Thammasat University

FTI 3. Thai Auto­Parts Manufactures

3. Asian Institute of Technology

Association

4. The Electrical, Electronics and

4. Kasetsart University

Allied Industry Club 5. Department of Land Transport

5. Automotive Companies

5. King Mongkut Institutes of Technology

6. Expressway and Rapid Transit Authority of Thailand

6. Map Companies

6. Burapa University

7. National Telecommunication Commission

7. Communication & Technology

7. Sirinton Institute of Technology

Companies

8. Department of Highway

8. TAXI Companies

8. Bangkok University

9. Others

9. Others

9. Others

– The role in Foreing collaboration Besides collaboration among Thai-ITS Society, ITS Program/NECTEC has also participated in ITS international activities. The relationship with ITS society all over the world has not only been very fruitful for research and development of our ITS Program, but also it has enhanced Thai ITS related industries. These followings have shown samples of international collaboration of ITS Program/NECTEC.

a) ITS-AP: It is the collaboration among ITS members of Asia Pacific (AP) countries, which are included Asia and Oceania. The collaboration aims to offer opportunities for networking and information sharing through the member countries, and also to bridge the gap between their transitional and industrialized economies. Among them, there is a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which has represented their policy direction and a spirit of the cooperation. All representatives of their member countries, so called Board of Directors (BOD) and committees, have signed on the MOU to agree on the rule and the policy, which the members have to follow. The current member countries of ITS-AP are from Australia, China, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and two honorary members from Korea. These member countries are not irrespective of political, industrial, cultural or institutional barriers.

ITS Program/NECTEC as one of ITS-Thailand active members has got a chance to attend ITS-AP activities such as ITS-AP Forum 2006 & Exhibition (in Hong Kong), and ITS-AP Forum 2007 & Exhibition (in Singapore).

In this coming July, 2009, Thailand will be the host country of the 10th ITS-AP Forum 2009 & Exhibition which ITS-Thailand will be the event main organizer. And of course, NECTEC will be a part of organizing team and committees.

Furthermore, we have attended ITS World Congress from time to time e.g. the 14th ITS World Congress in Beijing.

Another ITS related activity which NECTEC had played a major role was hosting “ The 8th International Conference of ITS & Telecommunications 2008”, in Phuket, during October 22-24, 2008.

The Conference aimed to provide a leading edge forum for researchers and practitioners to present and discuss the most recent research findings, and to promote on-going novel research on ITS service and applications devoted into three major areas of interests including:  Policy, Standardization & Service Applications in ITS,  System for ITS Telecommunications, and  Key Technologies for ITS The ITST2008 conference has not only ended successfully, but it also has brought about more collaboration on the research areas of ITS and Telecommunication among experts, researchers, and practitioners.

- The role in Standard International standardization of ITS is carried out by a number of standardization organizations including International Organization for Standardization (ISO), International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), Joint Technical Committee (JTC), and International Telecommunication Union (ITU). ISO/TC204 is a leading committee of ITS standardization activities. Under study at ISOTC204 are standardization proposals for (1) system architecture, (2) interface (message set, etc.), (3) framework (data dictionary and message template), (4) performance requirements of a system, and (5) test methods.

Among ISO/TC204 community, there are 2 types of members including Participating members (23 countries) and Observing members (25 countries). And Thailand has been one of the Observing members.

For Thailand, NETEC has initiated to establish ITS Standardization cooperatively with Thai Industrial Standards Institute (TISI), Ministry of Industry, which gives a support and helps in driving ITS Standards as one of National Standards. Also, NECTEC and TISI have been trying to enhance standardization activities of ITS to be more active by sending people to attend meeting , and arranging up seminars, for example.

Next year, NECTEC will organize a seminar on ISO/TC204, named “International Standards Organization General Information and Registration for the Plenary Meeting of ISO Technical Committee 204 – Intelligent Transport Systems”. The event will be on May 11-15, 2009.

Summary ITS is one of ICT system applied to the transportation area. Hence, the collaboration between government, academy and private sector in both ICT and transportation fields is the key of success.

NECTEC merges two fileds together and build-up the ITS community in the country. We take role in R&D and technology transfer to the government and private sector. We have sent researchers and staffs to participate as the association committees and work in the management team of the association.

Also, all stakeholders of ITS-Thailand have been offered benefits included: the Technology Road Map or Technology Foresight planning ahead for the market, the Common Infrastructure and National Standard and the Network or Linkage among Government, Private, and Academic, in both domestic and aboard. The milestone of our activities is sumarized in Figure x.

These works could not be done without the support from authorized party like the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the universities and local comapies. The established community “ITS Thailand� glues the parties together and acts as a gateway for foreign connection. A product from the NECTEC or university will be handed over to government and private sector via ITS Thailand.