6.1 Establishment of the Promotion System
6.2 Promotion of Research and Development
6.3 Raising Social Awareness and Acceptance
6.4 Infrastructure Installation toward Practical ITS Use
6.5 Cooperative International Relations

Since ITS has received commitment from a wide range of related technology fields and concerned parties, it is important to promote its deployment systematically and efficiently while maintaining domestic and international links.

Thus, it is important to aim at generalization by retaining the linkage of concerned parties in industry, academia, and government pertinent to ITS. In the government case, ITS achieves promotion using the opportunities provided by the five-ministry liaison conference and by maintaining close liaison based on the policy of the Advanced Information and Telecommunications Society Promotion Headquarters. To promote ITS as suitable for situations specific to a region, hearings will be held in the respective region to provide residents with an opportunity to discuss ITS. On the other hand, it is desirable for the academic field to positively provide opportunities for investigating ITS in relevant academic meetings, and for the professional field to provide opportunities for implementing inter- and intra- industry cooperation.

Concerning role divisions among industry, academia, and government, it is important to positively and systematically work on ITS with due recognition of their respective roles according to their respective standpoints. In other words, leading the other sectors, the public sector must work for promotion planning, research and development concerning roads and vehicles, infrastructure, settlement of related legal systems, and standardization to positively promote ITS for the whole country. The academia work with basic or advanced research for the expansion of research and development concerning ITS, and with personnel training required for ITS promotion through education. The industry provides high-standard technology development capabilities pertinent to vehicles and information communications compatible with ITS, and they work with commercialization of ITS to satisfy market demand.

In addition, it is indispensable for each field of industry, academia, and government to maintain international links based on their domestic links.

Establishment of a promotion system for implementing these links is a must for ITS realization.

6.2 Promotion of Research and Development

ITS has the primary purpose of establishing a new transport system for solving road transport problems. In view of the public character, it is required that both the public and private sectors work positively on research and development of ITS, including information communications infrastructure and vehicles based on the functional divisions and links between vehicles and infrastructure.

ITS is pertinent to diverse fields including roads, transport, vehicles, and information communications. Thus, ITS requires the establishment of links and cooperation among concerned parties in these fields. It is important that those concerned work on research and development activities recognizing their own roles while considering the entire ITS concept, and that they proceed with positive provision and exchange of research information to promote wide-ranging participation in research and development.

ITS leads a frontier field. Realization of ITS practical application requires maintaining system safety and reliability as well as development of state-of-the-art information communication and control technologies. It is also necessary to simultaneously implement development of man-machine interface technologies concerning "Advances in Navigation Systems" and "Assistance for Safe Driving". Thus, to utilize the technological skills of industry and academia, it is important to aggressively proceed with joint research by parties representing industry, academia, and government, and with the research entrusted to industry and academia.

ITS is a new system to be established with state-of-the-art technology. To ensure practical application, it is important to perform field experiments and trial operations to properly evaluate the results of research and development. It is accordingly essential to provide the experimental facilities required for research evaluation, to maintain test site locations, to provide opportunities for field experiments and trial operations, and to properly develop simulation and evaluation technologies.

For actual system development, it is necessary to maintain cooperative links based on common inter-system functions and common communication protocols to secure inter-system operability, connectivity, and expandability. Therefore, it is important to establish a system architecture and secure equipment compatibility and an open interface while viewing the international trends.

6.3 Raising Social Awareness and Acceptance

(1) Implementation of Legislation

ITS leads a frontier field, and approval of legislation related to the implementation of ITS practical applications will be necessary. Thus, it is necessary to carefully investigate the relationship between ITS and current legislation, and prepare and/or review legislation required toward practical use of ITS. In this phase, various potential problematic issues can be addressed. For example, the ITS research and development stage will have problems concerning the ownership of intellectual property related to the joint research by industry, academic, and government, and the practical ITS usage stage will have problems product liability based on the relationship between users and information equipment providers, protection of personal privacy and confidential company information, practical use of electronic settlement (payment), and maintaining security of personal information during transactions. Therefore, it is necessary to perform an overall investigation including the manner of system administration.

(2) Public Relations

ITS is a system established through introduction of new technologies based on the new concept. Thus, its purpose and content contain items which are not supported by conventional systems. For smoothly proceeding with development and deployment of ITS, efforts are needed to raise sufficient understanding and consent among the public concerning the importance of ITS. It is therefore necessary to actively transmit information about ITS in an understandable form and accurately recognize the nation's needs. For these reasons, it is important to perform positive public relations activities using diverse media including symposiums, pamphlets, annual reports and electronic information concerning the purpose, target, contents, effects, and progress of ITS promotion, and of the international trends in this field. It is also essential to actively work with user participation during trial operations and to disclose experiments to raise more detailed understanding of ITS among the public.

(3) Personnel Training

ITS requires interdisciplinary research over a wide range of fields including jurisprudence, psychology, economics, social science, and medical science in addition to a variety of engineering fields including civil, mechanical, electrical, and electronics engineering. To work with these interdisciplinary fields, it is indispensable to train researchers and persons in charge of business affairs in the pertinent fields. Therefore, for researchers in universities and other equivalent institutes, it is important to provide various information including research and development trends and related reference information as well as to actively support the networking of persons concerned and installing mechanisms for research information exchange. For persons in charge of business affairs, it is important to actively hold classes and seminars for ITS to train them as ITS experts.

6.4 Infrastructure Installation toward Practical ITS Use

ITS can stand only through networking of information related to road transport. It requires a high-standard of upgrading of diversified information-related infrastructure for collection, provision, communication, and processing of information, and installation of necessary infrastructure. Since the infrastructure required for ITS is highly public, it is necessary to actively and systematically promote implementation of this infrastructure to realize the development and deployment targets described in this entire concept.

The implementation of this infrastructure is deployed nationwide for the long term. From the viewpoint of continuously using the infrastructure for a fixed period without any major specification modification after completion, the expandability and convenience should be carefully considered based on implementation trends and standardization of the entire infrastructure.

6.5 Cooperative International Relations

ITS is a project worked on in many countries worldwide. To generate a better system, it is important to start daily information exchanges from the research and development stage and perform active information exchange for research and development trends in international conferences and on a bilateral level as well as aiming at implementing practical use of ITS based on international harmony.

Therefore, in addition to executing daily information exchanges according to the standpoint of individual ITS-related parties, international cooperation will be positively supported at the ITS World Congresses, which are held with Japan, the U.S., and European countries, and Asia-Pacific ITS Seminar as the foundation for maintaining contact. Also promoted is international exchange over a wide range, active response to activities of international organizations including OECD, promotion of joint research in the ITS field based on related technology cooperation agreements with advanced countries, interchange of researchers, and dispatch of an investigating commission and parties for technology transfer to developing countries, such as ODA activities.

International standardization related to ITS is now under discussion in ISO, ITU, and other pertinent organizations. In the domestic discussions related to ISO in Japan, the Japanese Steering Committee and WGs for ISO TC204 collect opinions from the related organizations, companies, and academic meetings. For the investigations related to the ITU, industry opinions are collected for the response in the Mobile Business Expert Committee Land Mobile Section Meeting in the Telecommunication Technology Council to respond to the TICS standardization activities in the radio communication field in the ITU-R (International Telecommunication Union - Radio Communication Sector) SG8WP8A. It is important in the future to make many propositions concerning specifications of the system under research, development, and practical use in Japan as well as to establish a system based on international integration. In this case, it is essential to actively support the activities of the Japanese Steering Committee.

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