IRELAND
Virtual Communities and ICT Platforms for Zero-Tolerance of Road Fatalities and Injuries______
1. Theme for the Joint Programming Initiative
Virtual Communities and ICT Platforms for Zero-Tolerance of Road Fatalities and Injuries.
The current trajectory of road traffic fatalities is such that by 2020 this is expected to be the third most common cause of death. Now, globally, about 1.2 million people die each year from traffic crashes and 25 million suffer permanent disability. The first ever automobile fatality was in Ireland when Mary Ward, a respected microscopist, artist, astronomer and naturalist fell from a steam carriage and went under its heavy iron wheels in Birr, Co. Offaly, on 31 August 1869 [1].
In the engineering of transport systems there has been some improvement over time. In Ireland for example, motor vehicle accidents including non-traffic accidents have led to the following annual fatalities from 1998 to 2006 [2]: 448, 414, 407, 391, 363, 309, 319, 344, 285. While the trend is decreasing, these figures remain very high. What holds for Ireland also is true for Europe and globally. In the past year, some 39,000 people died on Europe’s streets, roads and highways as a result of traffic accidents [3]. While this figure is down on the previous year, nonetheless the downward trend is not pointing to the European target of 27,000 by 2010 (that is, 50% of the number of deaths in 2001). This target will not be realized.
Much has been achieved through use of best practice and good engineering (in road design and the human-machine interface), through use of regulation and its enforcement (in vehicle health and performance, and linkage with culture and behaviour – for example, alcohol consumption), through materials science, and so on. However as noted, European targets, e.g. fatality statistics in 2010, will definitely not be reached. In any case, the numbers of fatalities and injuries (we have not dealt with the latter here) remain at levels that are unacceptably high, across Europe and globally.
The aim of this JPI is to develop and evaluate new information- and data-rich technologies, and deploy them towards the goal of road traffic safety.
While this draft proposal is anchored around software, telecoms, sensors, and interaction, pointers are provided here for various further work areas that can be added, such as in health, finance and law. In addition there is a need for strong collaborations with automotive manufacture and supply, road operators, goods transportation, public transportation, and other sectors.
Major strands of the proposed work are as follows. These strands are based on a continuum between research, R&D, applied research, operational deployment, and wide and broad user uptake.
- The Future Internet, which has become a focus of much European research and industrial R&D, will be directed in part to address the many issues arising in this Grand Challenge JPI.
- In wireless telecoms, peer-to-peer (P2P) and other systems will be developed for early warning, and scenario modelling and forecasting based on environmental and ambient data.
- In line with current Web 2.0 technologies, pride of place is occupied by standards and protocols, that are compatible with various complementary forms of intellectual property.
- Part and parcel of such Web 2.0 technologies is the mobilizing of communities in new ways that are analogous to how tens of millions of Europeans now use Facebook, Twitter, Youtube. The standards and protocols referred to above are developed and validated through such (or, if appropriate, new) virtual community platforms.
- Sources of information and data to drive this work will come from sensors (data measurement and capture in all forms, including visual, sound, environmental, chemical, thermal, and others) Pride of place in such sensors will be given to pervasive and ubiquitous information delivery and interaction platforms, - e.g. based on mobile phones and mobile phone/computer platforms such as the iPhone.
- Equally this work will be driven by the sensor web that is based on devices, and where appropriate human, inputs, and also on the information fusion that precedes knowledge creation and decision-making.
- Some aspects of the sensor web technologies and platforms will overlap significantly with R&D work in e-health, and with energy, climate and environment work.
- Various groups in society need special attention, for example the aged with assisted living requirements, or children. This JPI therefore leverages European research work on Ambient Assisted Living and independent living.
- Established areas of science and technology, such as environmental engineering, and urban and general spatial planning and design, need to be further developed in a context of the sensor web and of socio-economic impacts.
2. Proposing GPC member/members
Ireland and
3. Objectives
The objective of this work is to target the Grand Challenge of an immediate zero-tolerance of road traffic accidents through use of all possible data and information-based technologies.
Over and above the top-down, regulatory instruments, which have proven themselves to be of limited effectiveness (see section 1 and [4]), this work will leverage (i) distributed and networked virtual communities, thereby exploiting the “wisdom of crowds”, (ii) against the backdrop of mostly but not exclusively wireless data communications.
In this JPI the sensor web to be built is an outgrowth of the Internet of Things. It encompasses both travelling human and ambient environment. In this sensor web, dynamic context awareness is key.
4. Research questions being addressed
Some core research activities include the following.
- A main strand of the Future Internet is that of location-based services using GPS and mobile telecoms. This JPI will seek to direct and make use of geo-services towards the goal of combating traffic fatalities and injuries.
- Black box data recorders will be developed and deployed, linked to insurance companies (analogous to health sensors, e.g. pedometers, linked and relaying data to the health insurance system). This is one example of the link between mobile user and the data (plus, potentially, the compute) cloud.
- Hence this work will spur a new generation of mobile phone services, allowing P2P systems based on mobile telecoms, and also RFID and other technologies, to be built and deployed.
- Such geo-services include the leveraging of GPS and motion tracking through mobile phones.
- The data and compute cloud will service the mobile user. “Virtual data”, either value-added archived data or results of environmental and other models, will be merged with dynamic and real-time data streams.
- Information spaces will need to support (potentially real-time) access and retrieval of data.
A more general list of future concepts to be addressed includes the following.
- The Future Internet encompassing all levels of the networking stack, from high level services to the wireless and/or fixed photonics, or other, hardware communications infrastructure.
- Sensors and communications (peer-to-peer, P2P, and otherwise) between driver and driver, and between driver and environment.
- While a human driver, human passengers, and other humans, are our central focus, it is also important to consider robotic systems (so as to cater for, e.g., robotic train or bus systems).
- Leveraging of vehicle energy and emissions systems as data sources, and also benefiting from these systems for energy scavenging.
- Dynamic data capture of ambient conditions, including secure recording of driver behaviour.
- Use(s) of data and information in alert and warning systems; personalized and/or broadcast information dissemination systems; “black box” recording and uploads.
- Telematics linked to control, energy and emissions systems; remote diagnosis (borrowing from, and mutually reinforcing, areas as diverse as telemedicine and aircraft maintenance).
- Data mining and knowledge discovery.
- Information security layers, data and information trust, privacy and confidentiality.
- Data access and rights management.
- Personalized, context-aware information systems.
- Information fusion relative to personalized health systems that are in use by the driver and other vehicle passengers.
- Information fusion also with energy and emissions technical systems and subsystems that are in operation in the vehicle.
- Through complementary Internet of Things, which is broadly the sensor web referred to above, more direct and immediate linkages are needed with virtual communities. (For instance, Twitter-type early warning facility, converted for in-car use though speech synthesizer; or automated uploading to virtual communities in analogous ways to current human uploaded of visual data to Facebook or Youtube.)
- Establishing of protocols and standards through (virtual and physical) community action.
- Socio-economic issues, including reinforcing, or leveraging, influence by medical and transport insurance sectors, vehicle vendors, roadside services, regulatory agencies, legal and justice authorities, etc.
- Development of new financial – e.g. insurance – instruments.
As serendipitous or general byproducts of this work, one can consider: social inclusion; digital divide; experimental models of governance (e.g. through virtual communities, and P2P) with application to e-Government; safety and quality of life for the very young, and the elderly; mutually reinforcing learning from the handicapped in such areas as human-machine interaction, communication modalities, accessibility, and so on.
5. Added-value, benefits and impact
Industrial and business sectors of direct relevance: transport; finance; health; security; environment; engineering – electronics, mechanical, bio, civil and environmental; telecoms; data storage and networks; high performance, grid and cloud computing; law and justice; displays.
While there is funding under FP7 for the topic of this proposed JPI, it remains at modest levels (tens rather than hundreds of millions). As such, this points to the theme here being a very appropriate topic for a JPI. It is an area where there is a pan-European research agenda [5, 6, 7; see also ICT Research Directors strategic note in 8] but existing European funding is relatively modest. This JPI project will allow this pan-European research agenda to be implemented even though it is beyond the scale of what can be funded by the Framework Programme alone.
The gains in terms of quality of life for Europeans are inestimable.
This JPI will be based on a competitive/cooperative open innovation model that is part and parcel of Web 2.0; and it will be, in addition, fully compatible with many and varied forms of derivable intellectual property. The core open innovation model ensues from the Grand Challenge that underpins this work. This is the basis for how this JPI will overcome legal and practical barriers to cooperation.
6. Preliminary suggestions concerning the governance and implementation of JPI
A very wide range of current Member State research projects provide potentially relevant platform technologies and systems for this work. However inherently the work is distributed, pervasive and ubiquitous.
The proposed work will be in harmony with other national initiatives in energy and emissions (e.g. supporting scavenging and reuse), in relation to Ireland’s and other European nations’ IPCC obligations. The proposed work is strongly in line with the Digital Society and Smart Economy programmes of the Member States.
Core to this initiative is the harnessing of, and leveraging, communities and societies to address, by means of modern data and information-based platforms, the continuing carnage on European and international roads.
A main aim of this Grand Challenge JPI is to unleash the potential – as collective intelligence – of user communities who will be an integral part of the research. This work will provide a testbed for new forms of e-Government and e-democracy, which will drive forward a new European social agenda that advances into new domains of application, over and above the virtual Web 2.0 communities that now occupy a large part of the life and lifestyle of the majority of Europeans.
Performance metrics, apart from the stated social goal of zero-tolerance of death and injury in traffic, will be, more immediately and directly, the usual “Web 2.0” usage metrics relating to use, uptake and deployment of practices, protocols and standards.
Accompanying such a Grand Challenge are many new economic, business and commercial opportunities. In line with the Web 2.0 economy, central areas of open innovation, based on diverse forms of intellectual property, lend themselves exceedingly well to traded, proprietary and business-generating forms of intellectual property (patents, licences, trade secrets, etc.).
This JPI is most appropriate also to grow significantly the take-up of pre-competitive research across Europe (see [8]). It constitutes an experimental testbed on a European scale, based on the mobilizing of virtual communities that are both horizontal (across the European Union) and vertical (in terms of age, rural/urban, and so on).
WORK PROGRAMME TO BE CONTINUED.
References
[1] I. Fallon and D. O’Neill, “The world’s first automobile fatality”,
Accident Analysis and Prevention, 37, 601-603, 2005.
[2] Central Statistics Office, Ireland,
“Deaths from principal causes in the years 1998 to 2006”, www.cso.ie/statistics/principalcausesofdeath.htm
[3] Euronews, 22 June 2009,
“Sicherheit: weniger Verkehrstote in Europa – aber immer noch zu viele”,
de.euronews.net/2009/06/22/weniger-verkehrstote-in-europa-aber-immer-noch-zu-viele
[4] “Significant improvements in safety, security and comfort of transport. This includes contribution towards the objective of reducing fatalities with 50% in the EU by 2010, and longer term work towards the 'zero-fatalities' scenario.”
Updated Work Programme 2009 and Work Programme 2010, Cooperation – Theme 3, ICT – Information and Communications Technologies (European Commission C(2009) 5893 of 29 July 2009)
[5] Updated Work Programme 2009 and Work Programme 2010 Cooperation – Theme 3, ICT – Information and Communications Technologies (European Commission C(2009) 5893 of 29 July 2009).
See p. 65 (Objective ICT-2009.6.1: ICT for Safety and Energy Efficiency in Mobility Target) in particular.
[6] European Technology Platform ERTRAC (European Road Transport Research Advisory Council).
Its strategic research agenda includes the area of ICT for road safety. http://cordis.europa.eu/technology-platforms/pdf/ertrac.pdf
[7] eSafety Forum, http://www.esafetysupport.org/
[8] COM(2009) 116 final Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee, and the Committee of the Regions,
A Strategy for ICT R&D and Innovation in Europe: Raising the Game, {SEC(2009) 289}, Brussels, 13.3.2009
Annex
Current Science Foundation Ireland, SFI, support for work with relevance for this Grand Challenge JPI includes the following.