Adil Karaismailoglu, the Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure made a speech about the Strategy Document of National Intelligent Transportation Systems (AUS) and the 2020-2023 Action Plan Promotion Meeting, he drew attention to the rapid digitalization of the world. Karaismailoglu emphasized that information and communication infrastructures increased greatly in the last 6 months due to the global pandemic circumstances.
He pointed out that social and economic life has become more dependent on information and communication infrastructures with the significant increase in the use of voice and video calling, operations of distant education and remote working, video conference meetings, e-health applications, e-commerce and e-government applications. Karaismailoglu said:
“The monthly internet usage of fixed subscribers increased by 51 percent and monthly internet usage of mobile subscribers increased by 56 percent in the first 3 months of the pandemic period compared to the same period of 2019. We also create solutions for the increasing mandatory communication needs of our citizens. “
Karaismailoglu gave information about the operations carried out within Ministry during the pandemic period and said:
“By creating operations, as the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, we support the distant education for our students. We made studies with Turk Telekom, Turkcell and Vodafone; I want to draw attention to that we will continue to provide our students with free internet packages as long as they need.”
Karaismailoglu, explained that during the pandemic period, they have monitored the instant traffic through the National Cyber Incident Response Center, which is under the Information Technologies and Communication Institution, in order to ensure the continuity of the critical infrastructures, including education, health, banking and energy. He said:
“We maintain our surveillance and domination with great precision in our cyber homeland. In the last 6 months, we have carried out many preventive activities against Covid-19 themed malware and various phishing cyber threats. Our National Cyber Incident Response Centre teams made 42 malware detection related to Covid-19, blocking of 420 command control centers, detection and blocking of 71 fake video conferencing applications, detection and closure of 5 thousand 879 vulnerabilities in remote management services and interfaces.
We aim to reduce travel time, increase traffic safety, use existing road capacities more effectively and efficiently, contribute to the economy of the country with energy efficiency and reduce the environmental damage with our AUS studies.’’
Karaismailoglu, stated that they continue to implement the studies involving monitoring, measurement, analysis and control mechanisms with these projects. He emphasized that smart transportation systems are one of the innovative and visionary steps of the Ministry, in the field of transportation and communication services.
Karaismailoglu stated that they aim to revive the country’s economy, contribute to employment and most importantly, to add comfort and quality to the lives of the citizens through smart ways that will provide economic efficiency, life safety, speed and ecological benefit. He said:
‘’ Many tasks such as coordinating the works in this field, making the necessary legislative arrangements, determining the strategy and policies are carried out by the Ministry since the system is directly related to all modes of transportation.’’
‘’Fiber communication infrastructure will be established on the roads.’’
Karaismailoglu pointed out that they aim to reduce the loss of life and property by increasing safety in transportation, to reduce the carbon emission by eliminating traffic congestion as much as possible, and to increase mobility. He gave the following information about the operations within the National AUS Strategy Document:
‘’ We will do the necessary work to create legislation on issues that will be needed in the field of AUS. By preparing the national AUS structure, we will set the integration standards according to the needs of our country. We will conduct incident management with forward-looking transportation plans, establish Provincial Traffic Control Centres and Road Traffic Control Centres that will ensure coordination. In order to strengthen the AUS infrastructure and meet the communication needs of these demands, we will establish fiber communication infrastructure on divided roads and highways under the responsibility of our General Directorate of Highways. “
Smart parking project
Pointing out that the mobility caused by the need to find parking spaces in cities is among the issues that cause traffic congestion, Karaismailoglu said:
‘’ In order to solve this problem in our cities, we will develop an application that will prepare the basis of the development of smart parking projects in order to provide time and fuel savings. We will establish a cooperation-AUS test and application corridor that will contribute to the transformation of solutions, developed in line with the needs of AUS technologies, into final products. We will also carry out studies on the effects of developments in technologies such as artificial intelligence, deep learning, big data, mobile technologies, robotics, and Industry 4.0 on the AUS sector and their usage areas in the coming years. We will establish passenger information systems to make public transportation more comfortable and to encourage our citizens. “
Legislation on air taxi
Minister Karaismailoglu stated that AUS cooperation practices, popularizing autonomous vehicles, producing domestic and national in-vehicle communication and information systems, converting the motion energy of rail systems to green energy, making legislative arrangements for air taxi (VTOL) and similar vehicles, the use of blockchain technologies, and ensuring integration in all modes of transportation are among the long-term goals of the strategy document.
Karaismailoglu stated that they consider smart transportation systems as an important element for the future within the implemented transportation investments of the Ministry. He said:
‘’ We aim to achieve a more efficient, safer, more environmentally friendly and people-oriented transportation infrastructure with all our work. In this context, I fully believe that all our stakeholders will protect our roadmap during the implementation processes of the National Intelligent Transportation Systems Strategy Document and 2020-2023 Action Plan.’’
Karaismailoglu connected live to the main control centre of the Ankara-Nigde Highway, which was later put into service by President Erdogan, and he received information about the intelligent transportation systems in the control centre.
source: AA / translated by Melisa Karayusufoglu