IT behind the wheel

Systems send technical crash information, such as the force with which the
collision happened, the angle at which it happened etc. Result: rescuers can
send appropriate help and trans­port. A system in your vehicle tells you about
alternate routes. Another helps you choose different modes of transportation.

Press a button in your car, and it automatically calls and notifies a call
centre that you are in need of help. These scenarios are getting real and the
script revolves around our lives. This is a new revolution that is about to take
the transportation industry by storm, in conjunction with IT.

Telematics, as it is called, can be broadly defined as convergence of telecom­muni­cation
and informatics. It finds use in various areas such as healthcare and libra­ries,
but another common and wide usage is in road trans­portation systems. Here, it
is referred to as vehicle telema­tics.

After looking at the above examples, the first thing that crosses the mind is
the utility of telematics in the Indian context. With the huge gro­wth in
automobile popula­tion, new technologies are desperately needed to make the
task of driving simpler and safer. It brings a ray of hope in the lives of
traffic-beaten people like us, in Delhi, who spend around three hours on road
every day, simply commuting bet­ween home and office. Add a couple of outdoor
meetings, and you end up spending more time on the road than in the office. With
4.7 million vehicles on the roads, Delhi has the distinction of having more than
17 percent of the cars that run in India, accor­ding to a publication by the
Center for Science and En­vir­on­ment. Another statis­tics says that Delhi
has more cars than the total number of cars in Gujarat and West Bengal and other
cities are catching up fast.

Such a huge number calls for the intervention of IT to streamline and
automate the systems, for a smoother and safer on-road experience. Enter the
Intelligent Trans­po­rta­tion System or ITS. It uses leading edge IT to
improve efficiency of the transport system. Telematics products help drivers by
passing on information about jams and roadblocks, and help prevent accidents.
Advanced Traffic Manage­ment Systems can monitor and improve the flow of
traffic, and optimize signal timings by using cam­eras, detectors, and commu­ni­cation
systems. Incident management systems pro­vide tools for quick and efficient
response to acci­dents and emergencies. Data can be received through global
positioning systems and passed on to the drivers through wireless media. When
archived, the collected data can help town and transportation planners build
optimal travel routes.

There is little data available on the size of the market in India. One
analysis from Frost&Sullivan (www.transpotation.frost.com) estimates that
the vehicle tracking systems segment of the tele­matics market earned reve­nues
of  $6.4 million in 2005 and these
are likely to go up to $78.2 million by 2011.  By contrast, according to
Japan's External Trade Organi­zation estimates, the corresponding market in
Japan was worth $2.8 billion in 2002 and will grow to $12 billion by 2011. These
provide real-time road traffic information about congestion, jams, etc. There­fore,
there is an obvious but latent market in India.

If motorists find the very low-end tools such as traffic updates on FM radio
useful, the utility of IT enabled full-blown systems cannot be ignored.

(The author is Editor-in Chief of CyberMedia publications. shyamm@cybermedia.co.in)