ITS Solutions for Indian Traffic Scenario

• An indigenous Onboard Driver Assistance and Warning System – ODAWS, Bus Signal Priority System and Common SMart iot Connectiv (CoSMiC) software have been launched under Intelligent Transportation (ITS) System Endeavour for Indian Cities Phase-II initiative of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).

About Onboard Driver Assistance and Warning System – ODAWS:

• As per Ministry of Road Transport and Highways of India (MoRTH), in around 84 percent of cases, "driver error" was cited as the cause of the accident.
• ODAWS incorporates vehicle-borne sensors for monitoring driver propensity and vehicle surroundings to deliver acoustic and visual alerts for driver assistance.
• The project involves the development of sub-modules such as the navigational unit, driver assistance console, and mmWave radar sensor.
• The positional and dynamic characteristics of surrounding vehicles are probed using mmWave radar sensors.
• The navigational sensor provides a precise geo-spatial orientation of the vehicle as well as trends in driving behaviour.
• The ODAWS algorithm is used to interpret sensor data and offer real-time notifications to the driver, boosting road safety.

Bus Signal Priority System:

• Poor reliability of the public transport system is a major reason for people to opt for personal vehicles.
• One of the major causes of delays for public transport buses in urban arterials is the delay at signalised intersections.
• Bus signal priority System is an operational strategy that modifies normal traffic signal operations to better accommodate in-service public buses at signal-controlled intersections.
• Unlike a blind priority that is given for emergency vehicles, here it is a conditional priority, which is given only when there is an overall reduction in delay for all vehicles.
• The developed system will enable to minimise person delay by providing priority to public transport buses, either through Green extension or Red truncation, considering all vehicles approaching a signalised intersection.

Common SMart iot Connectiv (CoSMiC):

• It is a middleware software providing standard based deployment of IoT adhering to oneM2M based global standard.
• It facilitates users and application service providers in various vertical domains to use application agnostic open standards and open interfaces for end to end communication with well-defined common service functionalities complying with oneM2M standard.
• With this in view, CoSMiC common service layer is used to interface any vendor specific standards and for increasing interoperability with smart city dashboard. The horizontal silo architecture ensures interoperability and data exchange between different IOT devices and applications and avoids vendor lock-in.

Intelligent Transport System (ITS)

• ITS is a revolutionary state-of-the-art technology.
• It will achieve traffic efficiency by prompting efficient infrastructure usage, minimising traffic problems, enriching users with prior information on traffic, reducing travel time and enhancing safety & comfort of commuters.
• This system can detect any accident and receive alerts for ensuring that an ambulance reaches the accident spot within 10-15 minutes.

Benefits

• Safety
  • ITS technologies can be used to smooth traffic flows, reduce congestion and hence reduce certain types of accidents. Information which is provided through ITS can also be used to direct traffic away from accidents and alert emergency services as soon as an incident occurs.
• Productivity
  • Congestion lowers productivity, causes flow-on delays in supply chains and increases the cost of business.
  • ITS can increase productivity by finding innovative ways to increase the capacity of our current infrastructure.
• Environmental
  • ITS helps to reduce congestion and stop-start driving can also reduce fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions compared with normal driving conditions.

Challenges

• The ITS market is very nascent in India. Some of the challenges in successful implementation of this technology are as follows-
• Lack of definite guidelines and regulations and difficulties in physical implementation.
• Developing a nation-wide ITS data archive.
• India’s ITS can’t be entirely modelled on the existing successful ITS of other nations due to basic cultural, geographic & practical differences among the countries.
• High cost for ITS safety systems does not allow high penetration.
• Few people are willing to pay extra for safety systems and only few technologies are sufficient to ensure safety.

Conclusion:

• Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) provide a set of strategies for addressing the challenges of assured safety and reducing congestion, while accommodating the growth in transit ridership and freight movement. ITS improve transportation safety and mobility, and enhance productivity through the use of advanced communications, sensors and information processing technologies. When integrated into the transportation system’s infrastructure, and into vehicles themselves, these technologies relieve congestion, improve safety, and enhance Indian productivity.

Exam Track

Prelims Takeaway

• ODAWS
• Intelligent Transport System (ITS)
• Common SMart iot Connectiv (CoSMiC)

Mains Track

Q. In the context of climate change and environmental pollution, the Intelligent Transportation system can prove to be a major driver. Critically analyse.