Guest Editorial

Abstract

As a premise, readers should be informed that some decades ago the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Research identified a number of academic groups, based on their main disciplines: one of these groups within the area of Engineering was entitled “Transport”, which can also be understood as “Transport Systems”. The Engineering area includes 53 sub-groups, in a similar way to the ERC Panels in “Physical Sciences and Engineering” and “Social Sciences and Humanities” (e.g. SH2_8 Energy, transportation and mobility). Over the years, the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research changed the focus of these groups according to research needs. A so-called academic “Declaratoria”, which resembles the concept of a “Declaration of purpose”, describes the general academic aim of each of these groups; the one referring to “Transport systems” includes “ITS”, and has a similar description to the definition provided on the official IET Intelligent Transport Systems website. Every two years the academicians belonging to this group meet together, in order to share their scientific and technical results during a scientific seminar ; the most recent one took place at the Politecnico di Torino (Turin) in September 2015. The Italian Universities alternate with each other to host the event. The main issues of this scientific seminar can be summarised as pursuing innovative transport systems, services and solutions, in particular the subjects related to a gradual independence of the main energy source that transport systems are based on and the use of lower energy per unit mass in motorised mobility in order to reduce the energy consumption per person and – consequently – greenhouse gas emissions. The abovementioned is background information to help readers understand how this Special Issue came about. This edition was developed by selecting 21 papers out of the 43 that were presented at the Seminar. The subject areas of these 21 papers were considered to be relevant to the scope of IET Intelligent Transport Systems. It is clear that the majority of papers presented at the Seminar were dealing with ITS which coincides with the main EU research objective of making the European transport system more resource-efficient, climate and environmentally friendly, safe and seamless for the benefit of all citizens, the economy and society. We are moving towards a smart, green and integrated transport system, as conceived in the Horizon 2020 research programme. Following the journal's peer review process,eight outstanding papers were accepted for publication in this Special Issue. Angela Di Febbraro is Professor of Transportation Engineering at the University of Genoa, Italy. She obtained her Master's Degree in Electronic Engineering (1987), and PhD in Electronic and Computer Engineering at the University of Genoa. At a European level, she currently holds the office of Italian National Delegate in the Horizon 2020 Programme Committee of the Societal Challenge “Smart, green, and integrated transport”. She is the author of more than 200 scientific papers, mostly published in international journals and conferences. She is currently involved in several research projects. Her transport research interests have focused on the main aspects of planning, control and optimisation at a system-level, with special reference to safety, sustainability, intermodal and ITS. Agostino Nuzzolo is Professor of Transport at the Faculty of Engineering, and the former President of the Italian Academic Society of Transport (SIDT). For several years, he was lecturer at Summer Courses on Advanced Transportation Network Modelling at MIT, Boston, USA. His research activity is relative to the theory of transportation systems and its application in transportation analysis, modelling and planning. His main research areas are: travel behavioural models for ITS and ICT; demand and supply models for urban freight transport and city logistics; assignment models for transit networks; land use and transport interaction models; trip chain models in urban areas; simulation models for road accidents; DSS for strategic and tactical transportation planning. He is the author or co-author of several books, some of them concerning the innovative run-oriented approach to dynamic transit network modelling, and of more than 200 papers. Bruno Dalla Chiara has been Associate Professor at the Politecnico di Torino (I) in the field of Transport Systems since 2005; he obtained the national qualification as full Professor in Transport Systems in 2014. He holds a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering, in which he specialised in transport systems, engineering and economics (1993), and a Ph.D. in Transport Engineering, in which he specialised in ITS (1997). He holds the chair, at the Politecnico di Torino, in “Engineering and operation of Transport Systems”. He is the author of a number of publications, mainly concerning the engineering and design of transport systems, rail and intermodal transport and ITS.