ITU and ISO pool resources to address bottlenecks
Leading global standards organizations ITU and the
International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
have announced the creation of a partnership in the
burgeoning field of intelligent transport systems (ITS) to
speed up the deployment of ITS products and services.
Industry experts who gathered for the Fully
Networked Car @ Geneva International Motor Show
event on 2–3 March 2011 agreed that the next 20 years
will see a huge shift towards ITS. For the sixth year running,
the event was organized by ITU, ISO and their
partner, the International Electrotechnical Commission
(IEC).
Today’s communications capabilities make it possible
for vehicles to foresee and avoid collisions, navigate
the quickest route to their destination, make use of upto-the-minute traffic reports, identify the nearest available
parking slot, minimize their carbon emissions and
provide multimedia communications.
Despite considerable investment in research and development,
the lack of global standards has hampered
the large-scale deployment of ITS services and applications.
The involvement of international standards bodies
is critical to easing the bottlenecks that result in part
from poor communication between overlapping sectors
— automotive, ITS players, telecommunication suppliers
and operators.
The new Joint Task Force for ITS Communications
will engineer better collaboration between the different
sectors, and pool resources within ITU and ISO so
as to link existing work and avoid duplication. ITU and
ISO have long cooperated on the creation of standards
in the field. The new agreement cements this relationship,
promoting greater coordination of their work programmes
and harmonization of all outputs.
“Manufacturers have the will to implement these
technologies, but as yet there has been no real breakthrough
in terms of the technical standards needed to roll
this out on a global scale. Vehicle manufacturers do not
want to create different versions of the technology for
different markets. They do not want regional or national
standards. They want global standards. Through this
initiative, ITU and ISO show that they are willing and
able to provide them,” said ITU Secretary-General, Dr
Hamadoun I. Touré.
ISO Secretary-General, Rob Steele, agreed. “There
is a need to harmonize the standardization of essential
technologies to provide a solid base for further innovation
and the economies of scale for commercialization
of technologies”, he said. “We urgently need to
consider the interoperability of all of this technology,
not only in the vehicle, but also in the wider support
infrastructure. The value of the solutions proposed is
magnified when they are globally relevant. Customers
of international standards care about the benefits that
implementing international standards provide. Industry
should not — and will not — wait while standards organizations
fight among themselves or compete about
who will develop the standards. Industry wants to be
listened to, and have their needs for international standard
solutions met.”
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