Training

Now at this point it's important to note that ITS standards are not design standards. They do not specify specific products or designs to use. Instead the use of standards gives transportation agencies confidence that components from different manufacturers will work together without removing the incentive for designers and manufacturers to compete and provide products that are more efficient or offer more features. And this is one of the things that I think back on when I first heard about standards back in the late '90s. I had initially had this concern, "Well if everything was standard, how do we differentiate between vendors?"

If everybody has to build a controller, if everybody provides the same vanilla traffic controller what is the point of standards then and does that really benefit us? Well it does. These are—here's a bigger list of benefits and you'll see some of the ones that you chatted in will—are mentioned along this list. I'm not gonna go over each one on this particular slide but instead the next series of slides we'll go over each of these benefits individually.

So let's look at the first one about supporting interoperability. The ability of different ITS devices and components to exchange and interpret data directly through a common communications interface and to use the exchange data to operate together effectively is called interoperability. And this is a big key word that we use in our systems these days. Interoperability is key to achieving the full potential of ITS.

Seamless data exchange would allow, for example, an emergency vehicle to notify a traffic management center, perhaps trigger a change in the timing of the traffic signals on the path to a hospital in order to assist the responding ambulance. Just one example of an ITS standards and interoperability.