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ENT2a: Real-time data collection: Overview of sensor research

Background and contents

The need for the Action Group was identified as a result of Targeted Workshop on »ITS and reliability of transport« which was carried out on the 29th and 30th of November 2004 in Paris, France.

Key ideas and objectives

Tremendous efforts are beeing made to collect real-time data for several purposes in Europe. The co-ordination of the activities of countries could broadly contribute to utilize synergies and avoid double work in the field of sensor research.

To refine the topic following thematical focus points have been suggested:

1. low-cost sensors and sensor systems;

2. assessment of video-streams;

3. digital assessment of acoustic-streams;

4. weight detection (measurement in motion);

5. smoke and fire detection;

6. monitoring and tracing of pedestrian movements;

7. pervasive computing and sensor systems;

8. mobile sensor systems;

9. satellite based sensor systems.

Participating countries

Austria, Belgium, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden

Expected results and aim of cooperation

Referring to the first thematically focus four topics were identified by participants for trans-national cooperation, which could be addressed with further information exchange on demand:

• Assessment of video-streams

• Monitoring and tracing of pedestrian movements and flows (no security focus)

• Mobile sensor systems

• GSM-network based traffic detection

• Data collection – data fusion, data interpretation, quality standards

To address these topics with joint activities following possible levels of cooperation have been identified, although not yet explicitly approved:

• Knowledge Transfer

• Project Clustering

• Joint Projects

Status and intermediate results

The first meeting of this action group was a preparatory meeting among some key players of the national research arenas as well as programme managers and –executives. The recommendations formulated by this group were suggested as a common basis of research-interests.

At the second ENT2-meeting members of all seven countries participated, which announced their interest in this theme at TWS1 in Paris. This meeting had the high aim to form concrete trans-national cooperation in transport research and was addressed to national programme responsible. The delegates from the different countries came as well from Ministries as from subordinate agencies. The participants discussed the recommendations, brought in further suggestions for further cooperation and expressed their interests in cooperation activities. But it showed up very clearly that further specifications on the subtopics are needed and papers of joint research questions and research objectives have to be worked out in supplementary preparationmeetings for information exchange.

During the preparatory tasks of this action group a window of opportunity for starting a co-ordinated call on "Intelligent Logistics" were identified by Austria and Germany. As resources where concentrated on this idea (see action group ENT2b) activities in the field of "Real-time data collection" have been put on hold. However, observing the collaboration process in this action group brought forward first valuable experiences for ERA-NET TRANSPORT procedures and their refinements.