The 13th ITS Asia Pacific Forum will be held in Auckland from the 28-30 April, 2014, the first time New Zealand has hosted a global ITS conference. The event also coincides with the 10th Anniversary of ITS New Zealand, over which time the organisation has been a leader in the promotion, development and facilitation of sustainable, effective, efficient, safe and environmentally friendly transportation systems within the country. In keeping with this core vision, the conference theme, ‘SCORE’, will highlight five key areas:

• Safety – the role of technology in improving transport safety, including smart transport such as connected vehicles
• Choices – encouraging discussion, promoting cooperation, and ensuring productive relationships and the dissemination of information
• Opportunities – identifying and optimising future opportunities
• Results – celebration and sharing of positive results, whilst using all results as a learning platform
• Efficiencies – ensuring value for money from transport investments

At the beginning of June, Resolve Group’s Managing Director, Martin Leak, attended the 9^th ITS European Congress in Dublin, the theme of which was ‘Real Solutions for Real Needs.’ Addressing the similar challenges all regions face in delivering sustainable transport solutions to meet current and future mobility requirements, the event  was designed to be a place where transport authorities could find detailed information on targeted ITS solutions that would deliver tangible positive outcomes for real needs specific to their region.

Martin was particularly impressed by the level of technological connectivity that will be available in the immediate future in the vehicle fleet, and was surprised at how much of the technology that was experimental only a few years ago is now available to the consumer, “What I saw on test tracks two years ago is now appearing in commercial vehicles.” As an example, by 2015 all new vehicles will have ‘Eco Call’, an automated emergency response beacon. And by 2017, it is forecast that 60% of the vehicle fleet will be interconnected via the ‘cloud’ allowing for crowd source networking of huge amounts of data accessible to the travelling public via their vehicles.

Martin foresees rapid change in the next five years, with Europe on the cusp of the mass market introduction of Electric Vehicles. A number of new models from major manufacturers will be arriving on the market by the end of the year and issues of fragmentation within the Electric Vehicle market around easy, interoperable charging in public spaces are currently being addressed throughout Europe in order to support mass market adoption.

Dublin City works with IBM on transportation research and practice and as one of the ancillary events to the conference, Martin visited the IBM Smarter Cities Technology Centre in Dublin where a highly skilled and cross-disciplinary team are helping the city better understand, interconnect and manage its core operational systems such as transport, communication, water and energy.