Hossam Hassanein
Professor and Director, School of Computing, Queen's University
Date/Time: September 17, 2024. 13:20-14:00
Title: Vehicular Edge Services
Abstract: The rise of Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) and Connected Vehicles (CVs), coupled with their growing service demands and enhanced computational power, has created a pressing need for innovative edge computing solutions that can both meet their demands and harness their capabilities. By leveraging the underutilized computational resources of such abundant and powerful AVs and CVs, we can offload computationally intensive tasks to these vehicles, enabling parallel processing of partitioned tasks at the extreme edge, thus drastically reducing latency. However, AVs and CVs are user-owned Extreme Edge Devices (EEDs), characterized by a highly dynamic nature, including a dynamic user access behavior. This dynamic nature increases the risk of intermittent availability and the likelihood of continuous changes in the vehicles' available capabilities, leading to uncertainty and discrepancies between perceived and actual performance, ultimately reducing reliability and impacting the Quality of Service (QoS). To address the issue of intermittent availability, we predict the availability of vehicles to adapt to the highly dynamic nature of the vehicular edge computing environment, and we incorporate these predictions into the resource allocation decision. Additionally, to enhance reliability and reduce uncertainty, we develop a comprehensive reputation scoring system to assess the reliability of vehicles based on past performance, and we use such reputation scores to make proactive task replication decisions. Beyond leveraging the computational capabilities of vehicles, we also meet the increasing demands of AVs and CVs by enabling quality-aware offloading of tasks initiated and requested by these vehicles for cooperative perception, thereby enhancing traffic situational awareness. We improve the quality of cooperative perception by minimizing perception redundancy and maximizing the Value of Information (VOI) received by each requesting vehicle. These innovative strategies have the potential to revolutionize vehicular edge networks, leading to more reliable, efficient, and responsive intelligent transportation systems, ultimately enhancing road safety, traffic management, and the overall driving experience.
Marc Figuls
Managing Partner, Factual-Consulting
Date/Time: September 18, 2024. 13:30-14:15
Title: How to become a bike-friendly city? Lane Patrol as the international standard for cycling network planning
Approximately 1.19M road traffic deaths occur annually, with over half of the fatalities involving vulnerable road users, such as cyclists and pedestrians. The CycleRAP methodology is introduced as an evidence-based solution to assess the safety of urban infrastructure, aiding policymakers in prioritizing interventions to improve road safety and the Lane Patrol tool complements this model, enabling automatic image collection, analysis of key parameters using AI techniques from the assessment side, and simulations of potential improvements in the cycling network while becoming an international standard for planning safer cycling networks that has been applied in very different use cases at worldwide level such as Madrid, Skopje, Montevideo and Abu Dhabi.
Josep Maria Salanova Grau
Principal Researcher, Hellenic Institute of Transport / Center for Research and Technology Hellas
Date/Time: September 19, 2024. 08:30-09:15
Title: Innovative tools and data supporting decision and mobility policy making
Our cities are constantly facing complex challenges that need to be solved by achieving consensus and common understanding between the involved actors. While the owner of the problem is the society, the individual citizens, the solution comes from the academic or the private sectors, and the legislator for its application is the public sector. So, to provide the right solutions to the real problems, these actors should be well aligned. Data collection and analysis is key to achieve this common understanding, extracting information and knowledge to identify and quantify the problems, but also visualizing their dynamics to better communicate them with the other members of the eco-system. A multi-actor approach is needed, supported by innovative tools able to analyze these dynamics and create a space of solutions to stimulate co-creation exercises within mature living lab infrastructures. At the same time, these tools should, to some extent, allow the public sector to experiment with them, without the need of a specific expertise or external support. In this way policy making will be more flexible and able to follow market trends and the pace of the private sector. Cities should be the drivers of innovation to ensure that the implementation of the solutions is aligned with their mission. Innovative data sources are the fuel for these tools, but other aspects are also key, such as digital literacy and the end-user mindset. Thus, orchestration of large-scale pilot implementations following the living lab approach and achieving citizens engagement is the way to transform our cities into liveable spaces. Empowering citizens will transform them into ambassadors of our solutions and, with the right policy for its implementation, the scalability will be secured. The Thessaloniki Smart Mobility Living Lab is an example of an active eco-system where the mobility actors collaborate to improve the quality of life of the citizens of Thessaloniki. It strongly focuses in applying data to knowledge techniques to feed a decision theater supporting decision and policy making for both private and public entities and actors. The raw data ranges from floating vehicle and Bluetooth data to track anonymized user trajectories, to traffic and telecommunication data to monitor aggregated flows and densities of vehicles and persons. Dedicated tools provide traffic information and management services, enriched and personalized multi-modal routing and navigation services, fast policy making for micro and active shared mobility, and decision support for shared and on-demand mobility systems design, among many others.
Josep Laborda
CEO & Managing Partner, Factual-Consulting
Date/Time: September 19, 2024. 13:30-14:15
Title: Getting Ready for Autonomous Vehicles: the Smart Road Infrastructure Classification Index
Abstract: The session will introduce the index developed by FACTUAL and the International Road Federation (IRF), which evaluates the readiness level of road infrastructures for the commercial operation of fully autonomous vehicles. The aim is to collaborate with road infrastructure managers globally to establish the SRI as the first worldwide standard for assessing roads under consistent parameters.
