Evaluating cooperative ITS applications for sustainable and safe mobility with iTETRIS

We see today urban traffic growing faster than the capacity of road infrastructures and posing a challenge to traffic safety and to the sustainability of our mobility. In this context, cooperative mobility strategies are expected to become a key enabler for a better usage of the available road infrastructures. Considering the estimation by the American Automotive Association of the yearly cost of traffic safety to 160 billion USD, or the yearly cost of traffic congestion to 50 billion EUR by the European Commission, local road authorities are facing a strategic challenge to develop and propose cooperative ITS applications to the public. The question is how can the actual worth of investment and effectiveness of cooperative ITS applications on city road traffic be estimated? To answer this question, new tools capable of providing realistic and large scale assessments and guidelines to road authorities are required. To this aim, we need to define an extensible architecture allowing the interactions of realistic models spanning from wireless communication to traffic and mechanical engineering, and provide a modular integration methodology of cooperative ITS applications. In this talk, we present the outcome of the recently completed work of the European FP7 project iTETRIS during which an open, ETSI standard compliant, and flexible ITS simulation platform has been developed. We describe the modeling challenges, design choices, selected scenarios, and illustrate the benefits and functionalities of the iTETRIS platform through the integration of exemplary key cooperative ITS applications. We further discuss future evolutions,trends, and potential roles of simulations and the iTETRIS platform to reach sustainable and safe mobility resulting in economical, social and ecological wealth improvements.