Company Announcement - ETSI has just published two European Standards for Intelligent Transport Systems : the specification of Cooperative Awareness Basic Service -   EN 302 637-2, and the specification of Decentralized Environmental Notification Basic Service - EN 302 637-3. They define the message sets needed for running Cooperative ITS safety critical applications. Published as Technical Specifications in Release 1 of ETSI ITS, the ENs have been prepared taking into account feedback from Plugtests™ interoperability testing workshops organized by ETSI for the industry, as well as feedback from implementation. They were developed under Mandate 453 of the European Commission.
“Intelligent Transport Systems are essential when traffic keeps increasing on the roads and makes it harder for drivers and users in general to have a smooth and safe trip, whether it be for their daily commute to work or any other journey”, says Niels Peter Skov Andersen, chairman of ETSI’s ITS Technical Committee. “Standardization of ITS in Europe is therefore crucial for both economic and road safety reasons.”

The Cooperative Awareness Service enables the exchange of information between road users and roadside infrastructure, providing each other's position, dynamics and attributes. Road users may be cars, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles or even pedestrians while roadside infrastructure equipment includes road signs, traffic lights or barriers and gates. Awareness of each other is the basis for several road safety and traffic efficiency applications. This is achieved by regular exchange of information from vehicle to vehicle (V2V), and between vehicles and road side infrastructure (V2I and I2V) based on wireless networks. EN 302 637-2 specifies the syntax and semantics of the Cooperative Awareness Message and provides detailed specifications on the message handling.

EN 302 637-3defines the Decentralized Environmental Notification Basic Service that supports road hazard warning. The Decentralized Environmental Notification Message contains information related to a road hazard or an abnormal traffic condition, including its type and position. Typically for an ITS application, a message is disseminated to ITS stations that are located within a geographic area through direct vehicle-to-vehicle or vehicle-to-infrastructure communications, in order to alert road users of a detected and potentially dangerous event. At the receiving side, the message is processed and the application may present the information to the driver if it is assessed to be relevant. The driver is then able to take appropriate action to react to the situation accordingly. These two European Standards pave the way to new applications which will offer safer and more efficient driving conditions for all.