=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2803/paper4
|storemode=property
|title=Developing smart city transport applications: lessons and
suggestions based on the EU experience (short paper)
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2803/paper4.pdf
|volume=Vol-2803
|authors=Athanasios G. Giannopoulos
}}
==Developing smart city transport applications: lessons and
suggestions based on the EU experience (short paper)==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2803/paper4.pdf
Developing smart city transport applications: lessons and
suggestions based on the EU experience
Athanasios G. Giannopoulosa
a
TREDIT (Transeuropean Consultants for Transport, Development and Information Technology) S.A, 78C
Vryoulon & K. Karamanli St, Thessaloniki 55132, Greece
Abstract
This paper goes through the various aspects of smart-city transport developments that will be
likely to be implemented in the near future. It presents the context of future smart city transport
applications in terms of the technologies to be used, the user requirements and their expected
behavioural changes, the data collection and monitoring, and the need for integration across all
levels. It then gives three examples of smart city transport developments. They refer to the first
case of a successful smart-city development in Greece (the city of Trikala) and to two large EU
funded research projects that are dealing with the development of smart city transport
applications (project Citimobil2) and autonomous mobility (project Show). The overall message
is that smart city transport technological breakthroughs and innovations should go hand in hand
with sustainability and livability objectives and should be mostly led by user requirements (i.e.
bottom up).
Keywords 1
Smart-city, Transport, ITS, C-ITS, Information Technologies. Autonomous transport.
1. Introduction safe transport network operation. There are
many IT technologies and applications that
According to the European Commission, a have been and are being developed many of
“Smart city” is defined as the urban area which incorporating Artificial Intelligence (AI)
where traditional networks and services are and other features [1], [2], [3]. When we have
made more efficient with the use of digital and a number of ITS applications linked and
telecommunication technologies for the benefit cooperating together –via telecommunication
of its inhabitants and businesses 2. This simple and data transfer technologies such as 5G
and straightforward definition hides a multitude networks, we have the Cooperative ITS or C-
of Information Technology (IT) applications in ITS. Through C-ITS, vehicles can connect and
all aspects of city life that aim at improving the interact with each other (V2V), the road
management and efficiency of the urban infrastructure (V2I) and other road users
environment. As Transport is one of the most (V2X).
used networks in an urban area that connects A major advance in smart-city operation
people and businesses and carries goods will be the introduction and full use of the
around, its efficient and IT assisted operation physical internet or Internet of Things (IoT).
forms a vital part of the concept of a “smart Already many Smart city transport applications
city”. Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS), are which rely on “bundling” together a number of
IT applications providing some degree of C-ITS applications, are relying on the IoT to be
intelligence in the vehicle or at the roadside connected together and form specific, transport
with a view to facilitating a more efficient and related, services [4], [5], [6], [7]. The idea is to
Models and Methods for Researching Information Systems in
Transport 2020, Dec. 11–12, 2020, St Petersburg, Russia
EMAIL: tgiannopoulos@tredit.gr (A. G. Giannopoulos)
ORCID: 0000-0002-6494-0224 (A. G. Giannopoulos)
©️ 2020 Copyright for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative
Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org)
2 European Commission, at: https://ec.europa.eu/info/eu-regional-
and-urban-development/topics/cities-and-urban-
development/city-initiatives/smart-cities_en
26
provide advanced passenger and freight the atmospheric emissions and other
mobility with equal opportunities for door- to- environmental impacts of these technologies,
door journeys if possible by making use of even the recycling of redundant materials and
combinations of modes. A good review of the so on.
many technologies and especially AI and IoT This present paper deals with these and other
applications for smart cities (all sectors not only issues concerning the Transport C-ITS
transport) can be found in [8]. applications in smart cities. It reflects the
In the search to develop and have fully author’s experience from relevant applications
functional “smart-cities”, the European in Greece and Europe and refers to the
Commission has supported the development of challenges that are faced for more integrated,
guidelines for smart city applications. The most green and user-oriented smart city transport
recent of such guidelines is the Smart City applications.
Guidance Package that explains how to
develop and apply an integrated approach in 2. The context of smart city
planning and implementation of smart city
projects [9]. It explains the different stages in transport applications
developing a coherent roadmap and gives 2.1. The technologies
examples and key success factors (and also The main carrier of smart city transport
common pitfalls) for the introduction of smart applications are the various intelligent transport
city applications. technologies that have been or are being
An almost ubiquitous weakness in all the developed in the last decades. These, are
smart city literature is the extensive focus on combined and impacted upon by “external” (to
technology and its applications with little or no the transport system) technologies which are
regard to the user needs and to the need for also now being developed and gradually
“integration” of all the C-ITS bundles. In other deployed. Figure 1, shows this interaction in a
words we need to pay more attention to how we diagrammatic way. The main transport
can move from a “vehicle-focused” to a technologies that are available today, include
“system-focused” perspective based on user all the vehicle related ones (e.g. for cleaner
needs. To give an example, all modes of engines, driverless - autonomous and connected
transport should be included and integrated in a vehicles, and so on. Same for infrastructures
smart city transport environment especially the and software (see Figure 1).
more environmentally friendly ones such as
cycles and cycling [10].
A second weakness is the fact that ITS and
C-ITS applications are mostly considered in Transport Technologies
isolation, i.e. as "stand-alone" systems with A) Vehicles:
little consideration of their economic, social - Low emission
and ecological environment. However, if they - Autonomous 3D
are to form a vital and “active” part of a smart - Electric / FC / H2
city environment they need to be considered, - Connected
and accordingly planned, as part of the wider B) Infrastructures:
smart city applications, technologies and
5G -
- Climate proofing
business environment [11]. A systemic IoT
- self-healing highway
approach, covering all other relevant smart city
- Sensors
services and sectors is therefore necessary
C) Software:
when planning the transport applications so that
- Physical Network
they are integrated both among themselves and clean
with the rest of the smart city sectors. A further - Cloud computing electricity
weakness is the apparent second priority given - Big Data analysis
- Artificial Intelligence
to the "green" dimension as opposed to the
“technology” dimension. This means that at
equal level with the solving of the technical
Figure 1: Smart city transport technologies and
problems associated with the development and
external influencing ones (indicative)
installation of the various smart city (transport)
technologies, we should have the maintenance,
27
To these technologies there a number of due to extreme weather, cyber threats,
external innovatory developments that will energy crises etc. Recently, there has been
certainly influence and shape the smart city a dramatic increase in the frequency,
transport landscape of the future (e.g. 3D intensity and duration of extreme weather
printing. 5G cellular communications, IoT, as events due to climate change.
well as clean electricity production o New transport capacity offers due to greater
technologies). The technological developments willingness to collaborate all around in the
occurring or anticipated for smart city transport smart city transport businesses which will
applications have the potential to be be fundamentally changing the pattern of
transformational – i.e. revolutionize the way we demand for passenger and freight services.
travel. For example, cloud computing, the dual- o New, smart city related, policy perspectives
carbon battery, the electrification of highways, and objectives (e.g. on decarbonisation in
3D printing and cloud computing may prove the transport sector).
fully “disruptive” technologies. At the same o New life-styles. As an overall result of
time inter-connectivity between transport smart city developments our lives will
providers and between providers and users, gradually change and new life-styles will
needs to be raised to a much higher level and develop with more complex interactions of
several smart city ITS applications are aimed at demographic, sociological, employment
raising this level. and communication nature. The new life-
style that appears already (greatly
2.2. Smart city traveler expedited by the COVID pandemic) is that
more people will be falling into the LAT
behavioural changes category (‘living apart together’) and this
The full deployment of smart city
will redefine the concept of “locality” in
technologies will need to be followed by
urban areas. E-commerce is also rapidly
thorough changes in the travel behaviour of the
and drastically changing the mobility
citizens involved. New and extensive paradigm
patterns and last mile logistics in our urban
shifts, the adoption and familiarization with
areas. So, overall we must make sure that
new and disruptive transport technologies and
smart city urban duelers retain their healthy
changes in their related business, social or
lifestyles while reshaping transport
physical environment will demand radical (I
demand. Life styles and associated travel
should say) changes in our daily travel
behaviour will of course also be affected by
behaviour. We will be entering such a period of
the financial situation in Europe and
transformation that it would not be unrealistic
elsewhere.
to suggest that some form of action may be need
to train or “educate” the travelers in the new
environment, especially as regards the need for
them to use and respond to smart city 2.3. Data collection and
developments such as: monitoring
o Discontinuities in long term trends in key
trip-making characteristics such as, for Relevant to the smart city transport
example, off-peak mobility i.e. traveling technologies it must be stressed that a common
off-peak hours, abolition of car ownership European-wide system for smart city transport
and use of ride-sharing services or mobility data collection and monitoring should be
as a service (MaaS)3. Also, similar changes implemented that will have:
to the way goods are delivered and - Low cost monitoring devices;
distributed around4. - Low communication costs ;
o New risk profiles regarding road safety due
to autonomous driving or new risk factors
3 Vehicle sharing includes car/bicycle sharing as well as sharing pool, four to ten cars are removed from the streets. The
carpooling (sharing rides). Global membership of car sharing resulting environmental improvement would be even greater if
services is rising, with 12 million people expected to be part of a electric car sharing were adopted.
car sharing system by 2020 on a global level. Car sharing not only 4 We are already experiencing such changes (to delivery services)
responds to a demand for more flexibility, it also promotes a recently due to the increase in e-commerce as a result of the
wider use of multimodal transportation and helps to ease traffic COVID-19 pandemic.
congestion. It is estimated that for every car entering the car
28
- Uniform storage of data in appropriate Smart city transport applications are faced
data bases set up on a country (or regional) with a number of challenges. At the highest
level; level they must be consistent with the overall
- User interfaces standardized so as to governmental policies for achieving a
provide pan-European easy access to the sustainable, safe, efficient and inclusive
system; society. At a sectoral level, i.e. the transport and
- Host of applications open to private or the other relevant smart city sectors level, there
PPPs operators covering all possible are a number of challenges which can be
aspects of needs such as: traffic identified as follows:
management, user information, toll a. How to use transport as an enabler of urban
collection, road assistance, variable renewal;
circulation fee collection, environmental b. How to contribute to achieving the required
taxation and restrictions, navigation, and level of climate change, air pollution
many more. reduction and noise mitigation in the
A common feature of any smart city transport transport sector;
data collection system, will be the ability to c. How to manage the impact of demographic
manage and analyze large quantities of data trends and, in particular, the ageing
(terabytes per day). “Big data” techniques and population;
relevant computing infrastructures are therefore d. How to harness effectively the capabilities
a necessary feature of any future smart city offered by IT and artificial intelligence;
transport system with the aim to provide useful e. Measure and manage uncertainty and risk
real-time information to all users of the system at all levels;
[12]. f. Produce infrastructures that are resilient to
extreme events (weather, etc.) as well as be
2.4. The need for integration well maintained ;
“Bundling” of C-ITS applications to g. Maximize safety and security in the system
produce specific services, is a first level of (preventing loss of life and adverse health
integration that is necessary within a smart city effects);
transport system. The integration of all h. Take extra care in incorporating
bumbled C-ITS into a single city-wide system autonomous (driverless) transport vehicles
monitored and controlled by a control center, is into the rest of the traffic flows in the
the second level integration that is necessary. intermediate period of joint operation;
There is also a third level integration that is i. Harmonize all the above with the need to
necessary and this is between the transport- reduce and eventually eliminate the
related applications and the other smart city dependence on fossil fuels.
sectors related applications (e.g. in areas such
as health, education, services, etc.).
In all cases of integration the following 4. Some European examples
“integration principles” are recommended:
a. Strive for open, modular and extendable Smart city related C-ITS developments are
systems; being implemented all over Europe. They are
b. Bring together all sub-systems and services mostly stand-alone systems that are put up for
under one common user friendly demonstration and assessment but some of
environment; them become permanent.
c. Try to integrate also at a cross cutting level One very interesting real-life
e.g. among transport modes, between implementation of an integrated smart city
passenger and freight transport, urban and system, with which this author is familiar, is the
inter-urban transport and between transport smart-city Trikala in Greece. This is a medium
and the land-use system. sized city of approximately 80 000 population
in the middle of Greece in a predominately
agricultural area whose municipal authorities
over several years, starting in 2004, started
3. Smart city transport challenges applying ITS and other sector smart services as
part of an integrated concept for the
29
development of the Trikala as a smart city
(initially called “digital” city). The first set of
applications, was financed in 2004 by Greece's
Ministry of Economics. Three years later,
Trikala had established a fiber network linking
40 buildings and formed, with eight
neighboring communities, a cooperative named Figure 2: The autonomous bus experimental
e-Trikala to operate it and introduce a service vehicle in operation in Trikala.
broadband culture of use. By 2008, e-Trikala
had installed twelve broadband wi-fi nodes and Furthermore, worth mentioning are two on-
quickly gained 10 000 users5. Access was free going EU funded research projects that when
to residents and visitors after they register at completed will provide many answers and
one of the many e-Trikala offices. To build recommendations that will help the installation
usage, e-Trikala has launched online services of smart-city applications in European cities.
including public policy forums, tele-health and They are, projects C-MOBILE (Accelerating
a specially designed web portal connecting C-ITS Mobility Innovation and deployment in
customers to Trikala businesses. The wireless Europe)9 and SHOW (Shared automation
network also controls information displays for Operating models for Worldwide adoption) 10.
the bus network, improving service and C-MOBILE involves a total of eight C-ITS
increasing ridership. More recently, e-Trikala equipped cities and regions in developing and
expanded the wireless network and begun testing smart city transport applications. The
deployment of Fiber to the home (FTTH) lines cities are: Barcelona, Bilbao, Bordeaux,
for businesses and households. Other notable Newcastle, Thessaloniki, Vigo, Copenhagen,
developments in the city that lead it to become and the North Brabant region. The applications
Greece’s first smart-city, included: tested, include: Urban Efficiency: Rest time
Installation of an integrated e-city control management / Motorway parking availability /
center which monitors everything from Urban parking availability. Infrastructure-to-
parking spaces to the town hall’s monthly vehicle safety: Road hazard warning /
budget; Emergency vehicle warning / Signal violation
The e-Trikala supplied all of the city’s 120 warning / Warning for pedestrians. Traffic
public schools Lego and Raspberry Pi Efficiency: Green priority / Green light optimal
robotics kits; speed advice (GLOSA) / Dynamic eco-driving
Trikala was the first city in Greece to try the / Cooperative traffic lights for pedestrians /
5G technology; Flexible infrastructure (priority lanes) / In-
Through the participation in many EU vehicle signage (dynamic speed limit). Vehicle-
funded research projects, the city has to-vehicle safety: Emergency brake light /
managed to draw on a total funding of some Cooperative (adaptive) cruise control (Urban
€20 million for several smart city ACC) / Slow or stationary vehicle warning /
applications. Most notable examples are Motorcycle approaching indication (and other
project ELVITEN for electric vehicles 6 and road users) / Blind spot detection & warning.
project CITIMOBIL2 which installed the In project SHOW, a total of more than 70
first driverless-bus pilot service in autonomous transport real-life urban
Greece7; demonstrations are to be conducted and
In a recent article about Trikala, the UK evaluated in 20 cities across Europe for 24
paper The Guardian8 noted, “Trikala citizens months starting in mid-2021. The project
do not have to ask the local politician to get investigates technical solutions, business
things done anymore. They do what they need models and priority scenarios for the
electronically through the smart-city deployment of shared, connected, electrified
applications they have now available”. fleets of autonomous vehicles in coordinated
Public Transport (PT), Demand Responsive
5 See for example: https://www.smartcity.press/trikala-smart- 8 https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/sep/04/trikala-
initiatives/ greece-first-smart-city-dont-need-to-know-a-politician-to-get-
6 Project ELVITEN, in: https://www.elviten-project.eu/en/about/ something-done
7 Project CITIMOBIL2 – Trikala, in: 9 See: https://c-mobile-project.eu/
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/314190/reporting 10 See: https://show-project.eu/
30
Transport (DRT), Mobility as a Service urban goods deliveries that will be due to the
(MaaS), and Logistics as a Service (LaaS) advent of e-commerce.
operational chains. All urban demonstrations of Information Technology and the many
the SHOW project are user-led and aim at cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems
developing international standards and applications that are being tested and gradually
guidelines for Autonomous transport in urban introduced in our cities will certainly change
areas. The cities in which the SHOW demos are them to become “smart” but at the same time
deployed are: a) “Mega-city” full use-case we must ensure that they also remain “livable”
applications in: Rouen, Rennes, Madrid, Graz, and “humane”. In other words smart-cities must
Salzburg, Vienna, Karlsrue, Mannheim, comply with the need to combine their high
Aachen, Linkoping, and Kista. “Satellite” cities technological development with retaining
which will complement (with regard to healthy lifestyles and sustainability throughout
technologies, business models, geographical the system.
coverage) the mega-cities: Brainport/
Eindhoven, Tampere, Trikala, Torino,
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