ITS development in Colombia: challenges and opportunities

The Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) integrate information from multiple systems and sensors to provide information to travellers and authorities and help to minimize transport problems. They can provide, for instance, real-time information of traffic, local buses and time taken to reach an specific destination to help travellers plan their trips and improve their safety and comfort. Countries such as Japan, United States, Chile and Peru have initiatives for implementing their nation-wide ITS. In Colombia, there are many local ITS services implemented by local authorities, national offices and commercial companies. However, these solutions remain largely isolated one to the others, implying not only the duplication of efforts but also limits to the information that these services provide. In addition, Colombia has not defined some technical standards that may support the implementation and integration of the ITS in the country. This paper presents some conclusions of the panel discussion held in the Workshop on Intelligent Transportation Systems (WITS 2018) regarding opportunities and challenges to implement ITS in Colombia: It is important to define a plan that prioritize the ITS systems to develop, to define technical standards that support their integration at regional and national levels, and to promote coordinated efforts of academy, industry and government to implement these solution.