As part of the last DATEX II Steering Group meeting held in Athens, Vasilis Mizaras, senior ITS expert from the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas – Hellenic Institute of Transport, made a presentation explaining the status and prospects of the DATEX II deployment of ITS in Greece.
The presentation was structured in four main blocks, which are summarized below in order to give a global idea of this implementation at the national level.
- Vasilis started describing the best practice of DATEX II implementation for data exchange between operational TMCs in Attica Region. The data exchange is taking place between Attiki Odos Tollway (AO) (the peripheral highway of Athens connecting the airport to downtown and bypassing the Athens metro area) and Athens-TMC (central TMC of the Athens prefecture operating since 2003). The data exchange started in 2010 and it is operational since then.
- As part of the second section of the presentation, it was described the new development and work in progress of National Access Point of Greece. NAP is being implemented by CERTH/HIT on behalf of the Greek Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure in the framework of CROCODILE II project, and it has come in productive operation since 2018. NAP is by design a DATEX II compliant platform, but the adoption of DATEX II should harmoniously rise. NAP currently covers Egnatia Odos Highway, parts of the National Highway Network and the Urban area of Thessaloniki.
- The inclusion of new C-ITS applications in the framework of DATEX II is one of ITS Hellas’ ambitions. There are two on-going relevant projects in Greece. One is C-MOBILE (Accelerating C-ITS Mobility Innovation and depLoyment in Europe, Co-funded by the EU Framework Programme for Research and Technology “Horizon 2020”, Type of Action: Innovation Action), which is demonstrating C-ITS in Large Urban environments. Among other Cities, the Greek City of Thessaloniki is involved as demonstrator. A key concept for Thessaloniki demonstrator is “C-ITS Bundling” which is an intermediary between Service providers and Traffic Management Centers, and has the objective of bringing together a complete suite of C-ITS services under one common environment. The second relevant project is C-ROADS Greece with the goal to pave the way for large-scale deployment of interoperable C-ITS services in Greece. There are two greek pilots, namely Egnatia Odos Highway and Attica Odos Tollway.
- As a closing statement, envisaged future scenarios for DATEX II in Greece were raised:
- Enhancement of data exchange between Urban & Highway areas. New use cases can emerge such as parking, electromobility and interaction with Port and Logistic systems
- Expansion of involvement of C-ITS
- Holistic and multimodal management. This approach requires traffic data exchange with the mobility service providers included in a Mobility as a Service (MaaS) scheme
The full presentation is available upon request. For a copy of the presentation please contact:
- Dr. Evangelos Mitsakis
- Senior Researcher, Centre for Research and Technology Hellas – Hellenic Institute of Transport
- ITS Hellas
- e-mail: emit@certh.gr