Providing system architecture for European transport telematics

Transport telematics is the term used by the European Commission as a title for its research programmes on intelligent transport systems (ITS). It covers all types of computer-based transport systems from traveller information to demand management, and from traffic control to advanced vehicle systems. Since the early 1990s a number of people have been suggesting that ITS should have a system architecture, but this was not always received favourably in various quarters. It became apparent that this was due to a lack of understanding of the issues involved and that there were three basic questions that needed to be answered: why do we need a system architecture? what are the issues covered by a system architecture? what is a system architecture? The authors discuss these three questions.