**1. Introduction**

58 Urban Development

Ubiquitous technologies are being adapted here to create new value to urban amenities for better human environment. Through u-services of digital amenities, not only will the quality of human life be improved, but traditional functions of a community will also be restored by

A great amount of money is required to facilitate digital amenities. Although digital amenities are in principle, the infra-structure of digital environment, the investment should be allotted for people, for the objective of implementing a smart city is to increase human

A sustainable business model that will increase the life value of citizens while building up a

The research project which is described in this paper has been carried out for almost a decade. During that period a good number of graduate students have participated in this project. I have to thank them for their contribution to research outcomes. I also thank Professor Sung Ah Kim of Sung Kyun Kwan University and President Seung Sik Yoon of

This study is supported mostly by research grant (11CHUD-B054382-05) of advanced urban

Anthony Giddens, (July, 1991), *Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern* 

Bell. K, (2000) Urban Amenity Indicators: The Liveability of our Urban Environments,

Edward L. Glaeser, (February 2011). *Triumph of the City, How Our greatest invention makes us* 

Nei Argent, Peter Smailes, Trevor Griffin, (Sep 2007), The Amenity Complex: Towards a

Pinker. S. (Oct 1997). *How the Mind Works*, W. W. Norton & Company*,* ISBN 0-393-31848-6, N.Y Pinker. S. (September 2007). *The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature*,

Rudy Rucker, (2005). *The life box, The sea shell, and the soul*, Thunder's mouth press, ISBN 1-

Shapiro, Jesse M. (May 2006), Smart Cities: Quality Of Life, Productivity, And The Growth Effects Of Human Capital, *Review of Economics and Statistics*, v88(2,May), pp 324-335. Uk. Kim, Ji-Young. Jang, Seung Sik. Yoon. (Feb 2010). The innovative urban artifacts on streets and parks using ubiquitous technology, *IADIS international e- society,* pp 115-119. Uk. Kim, Ji-Young. Jang, Sung-O. Cho. (Sep 2009). A study on the innovative urbanization

using ubiquitous technology, *ISCIT 2009*, Vol.1(1), pp. 273-278, ISSN 978-1-4244-4522-6

Environmental Performance Indicators, Urban Amenity, *EnviroSolutions NZ Ltd and Glasson Potts Group Ltd for the Ministry of the Environment*, Technical Paper No. 63,

*richer smarter greener healthier and happier*, Penguin Press HC, ISBN 0230709389, USA

Framework for Analyzing and Predicting the Emergence of a Multifunctional Countryside in Australia, *Institute of Australian Geographers Geographical Research*,

development project, the Ministry of land, Transport and Maritime Affairs(MLTM).

*Age*, Stanford University Press, ISBN-13 : 978-0804719445, USA

Charles Landry, (1995). *Creative city*, Demos, ISBN 1898309167, UK

connecting members geographically, and networking them socially.

successful business ecology will be derived as a result.

UBIDUS company for their advice and cooperation.

Vol. 45, No. 3, pp 217-232

56025-898-5, N.Y

Penguin*,* ISBN 978-0-14-200334-3, USA

**8. Conclusion** 

capital for sustainability of the city.

**9. Acknowledgment** 

**10. References** 

Nowadays, the number of vehicles on the road and the need of transporting people grow fast. Road transportation has become the backbone of industrialized countries. Nevertheless, the road network system in cities is not sufficient to cope with the current demands due to the size of roads available. Building additional or extending existing roads do not solve the traffic congestion problem due to the high costs and the environmental and geographical limitations. As a consequence, the modern society is facing more traffic jams, higher fuel bills and high levels of CO2 emissions.

Vehicular traffic is one of the most critical concerns of modern societies where cities are ever growing. The *United Nations Population Foundation* published in its technical report (UNFPA, 2007) that for the first time, more than half the world's population lives in urban areas and the balance of people continue shifting to the cities. As a consequence, drivers and passengers spend a large percentage of their day stuck in traffic.

Traffic congestion in urban areas is a serious problem that has an important economical, environmental and road safety impact. The technical report of the *Texas Transportation Institute* shown that in 2010 traffic congestion represented an \$101 billion annual drain on the U.S. economy, with 4.8 billion hours and 1,9 billion gallons of fuel spent on traffic, the equivalent of one work week and three weeks worth of gas every year (Schrank et al., 2011). According to the *Intelligent Energy Europe* in the European Union (EU), traffic congestion costs \$50 billion per year or 0.5% of the community Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and by 2010 this figure could go up to 1% of EU GDP.

Therefore, traffic congestion has an important environmental impact. According to the technical report on traffic congestion and greenhouse gases (Barth & Boriboonsonsim, 2009) a third of America carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions come from moving people or goods, and 80 percent of these emissions are from cars and trucks. According to the Eurostat data, road transport accounted for 19.5% of the EU total greenhouse gas emissions in 2008 (Bakas, 2008).

On the other hand, regarding road safety impact, the technical report of the Commission for Global Road Safety indicates that road crashes kill at least 1.3 million people each year and injure 50 million. Significantly, 90% of these road casualties occur in developing countries.

Emerging Technologies for Urban Traffic Management 61

and more harmonious use of intelligent transportation systems and services, which in turn

Fig. 1. Communication modes for VANET a) vehicle-to-vehicle mode (V2V) and b) vehicle-

This chapter gives the readers a global vision of traffic and transportation issues and how the application of emerging technologies might contribute to the solution of transportation challenges. The chapter is organized as follow: The first section of the chapter provided a global view of traffic and transportation issues. The second section of the chapter provides an overall view of the fundamental challenges of vehicular networks and their applications. The third section presents a global analysis of the emerging technologies that can be used in the vehicular communications. Finally, the last part of the chapter describes several sensing

In comparison to other communication networks, vehicular communication networks come with some unique attractive features: unlimited transmission power, predictable mobility and plethora of potential applications. However, vehicular networks have to cope with some important challenges that include: 1) extreme heterogeneity, 2) rapidly changing topology subject to frequent fragmentations and congestion, 3) the stringent application requirements on real-time and robust message delivery, 4) security of the information and users. In this section of the chapter we analyse some of these challenges that the vehicular networks face.

platforms for collecting information about traffic conditions.

**2. Challenges of vehicular networks** 

to-insfrastructure mode (V2I).

will contribute to more efficient, cleaner and safer transportation.

Each year 260,000 children die on the road and another million are seriously injured. By 2015 road crashes are predicted to be the leading cause of premature death and disability for children aged five and older (Commission for Global Road Safety, 2009).

It is essential to improve the safety and efficiency of transportation. Several research groups focus their attention on the emerging technologies as a feasible alternative to solve the traffic and transportation problems. The primordial objective is that emerging technologies can contribute to the solution of transportation issues by making transport safer, more efficient and competitive, more sustainable and more secure.

In this way, emerging technologies are established as basic elements of transportation systems. The increasing capacity and flexibility of emerging technologies could make it possible to create cooperative automotive systems and reduce investment, operational costs and accidents, making more efficient transport systems. Emerging technologies must guarantee the required demands of transportation systems. Communication technologies should be used to build vehicular networks to reduce traffic congestion and improve safety. Safety and efficiency on roads can be substantially improved with the deployment of intelligent systems such as adaptive traffic control, incident detection and management systems both in cities and highways. To enable these systems, vehicles must be equipped with wireless radios and communication devices must be placed on the roadsides. Roadside units can be utilized to extend the network coverage, enabling communication between distant vehicles (i.e. beyond its radio range), support a high-speed and low-latency network and provide services to both public and private companies. In this sense, recent advances in technology, particularly in the areas of mobile computing, a new generation of wireless adhoc networks, which is named *Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks* (VANETs), is emerging. In this kind of network vehicles could communicate with each other on the road and the intention of this network is to solve traffic problems by means of *vehicular to vehicular* communication (V2V) and *vehicular to infrastructure* communication (V2I) as shown in figure 1. For this communication, some devices known as *on-board units* (OBUs) must be placed at each vehicle. These devices can send or receive data to or from *roadside units* (RSUs). Nevertheless, if a vehicle cannot directly send its data to an RSU, it can relay its data to other vehicles until the data reach to the RSU using a multihop transmission strategy (Yang et al., 2007).

In the near future, it is expected that urban and vehicular networks will co-exist and be interconnected for exchanging and sharing of information and services. This mixture of networks represents an important opportunity for optimizing traffic flow in urban areas, improving urban transportation services, and monitoring the environment. However, in order to enable interconnectivity between these networks and support the development and deployment of such type of applications there still exist important challenges in terms of heterogeneity, security, privacy, quality of services and scalability that need to be overcome.

It is being proposed to accelerate and coordinate the deployment and use of vehicular networks applications and services for road transportation and their connections with other modes of transport, to ensure seamless access and continuity of services. Some areas involved in this integration are: optimal use of road and traffic data, traffic and freight management, road safety and security, integrating vehicular networks applications in the vehicle, data protection and liability. The direct benefit will be a faster, better-coordinated

Each year 260,000 children die on the road and another million are seriously injured. By 2015 road crashes are predicted to be the leading cause of premature death and disability for

It is essential to improve the safety and efficiency of transportation. Several research groups focus their attention on the emerging technologies as a feasible alternative to solve the traffic and transportation problems. The primordial objective is that emerging technologies can contribute to the solution of transportation issues by making transport safer, more efficient

In this way, emerging technologies are established as basic elements of transportation systems. The increasing capacity and flexibility of emerging technologies could make it possible to create cooperative automotive systems and reduce investment, operational costs and accidents, making more efficient transport systems. Emerging technologies must guarantee the required demands of transportation systems. Communication technologies should be used to build vehicular networks to reduce traffic congestion and improve safety. Safety and efficiency on roads can be substantially improved with the deployment of intelligent systems such as adaptive traffic control, incident detection and management systems both in cities and highways. To enable these systems, vehicles must be equipped with wireless radios and communication devices must be placed on the roadsides. Roadside units can be utilized to extend the network coverage, enabling communication between distant vehicles (i.e. beyond its radio range), support a high-speed and low-latency network and provide services to both public and private companies. In this sense, recent advances in technology, particularly in the areas of mobile computing, a new generation of wireless adhoc networks, which is named *Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks* (VANETs), is emerging. In this kind of network vehicles could communicate with each other on the road and the intention of this network is to solve traffic problems by means of *vehicular to vehicular* communication (V2V) and *vehicular to infrastructure* communication (V2I) as shown in figure 1. For this communication, some devices known as *on-board units* (OBUs) must be placed at each vehicle. These devices can send or receive data to or from *roadside units* (RSUs). Nevertheless, if a vehicle cannot directly send its data to an RSU, it can relay its data to other vehicles until the data reach to the RSU using a multihop transmission strategy (Yang et al.,

In the near future, it is expected that urban and vehicular networks will co-exist and be interconnected for exchanging and sharing of information and services. This mixture of networks represents an important opportunity for optimizing traffic flow in urban areas, improving urban transportation services, and monitoring the environment. However, in order to enable interconnectivity between these networks and support the development and deployment of such type of applications there still exist important challenges in terms of heterogeneity, security, privacy, quality of services and scalability that need to be overcome. It is being proposed to accelerate and coordinate the deployment and use of vehicular networks applications and services for road transportation and their connections with other modes of transport, to ensure seamless access and continuity of services. Some areas involved in this integration are: optimal use of road and traffic data, traffic and freight management, road safety and security, integrating vehicular networks applications in the vehicle, data protection and liability. The direct benefit will be a faster, better-coordinated

children aged five and older (Commission for Global Road Safety, 2009).

and competitive, more sustainable and more secure.

2007).

and more harmonious use of intelligent transportation systems and services, which in turn will contribute to more efficient, cleaner and safer transportation.

Fig. 1. Communication modes for VANET a) vehicle-to-vehicle mode (V2V) and b) vehicleto-insfrastructure mode (V2I).

This chapter gives the readers a global vision of traffic and transportation issues and how the application of emerging technologies might contribute to the solution of transportation challenges. The chapter is organized as follow: The first section of the chapter provided a global view of traffic and transportation issues. The second section of the chapter provides an overall view of the fundamental challenges of vehicular networks and their applications. The third section presents a global analysis of the emerging technologies that can be used in the vehicular communications. Finally, the last part of the chapter describes several sensing platforms for collecting information about traffic conditions.
