Final Report—February 2011
FHWA-JPO-11-052
Version 1.00

Appendix B—International Standards Activity

This section identifies the purpose of, describes a general plan for, and defines the criteria unique to ITS-JPO involvement in international ITS standards activities.

Purpose of ITS-JPO's Participation in International Standards Activities

The overall purpose for ITS-JPO's involvement with international ITS standards is to develop, when possible and to the greatest extent practical, harmonized international standards in order to facilitate the development and deployment of globally interoperable ITS systems and equipment. In addition, ITS-JPO recognizes that international experts and government groups involved with ITS standards can offer significant technical expertise and lessons learned to augment the knowledge base of U.S. experts; and that access to this expertise can be leveraged through international partnerships.

Benefits of international cooperation include:

• The leveraging of international expertise to help develop technically sound standards.
• Building on lessons learned and sharing experiences with the use and maintenance of standards.
• Encouraging open standards development processes that provide appropriate transparency and input from international stakeholders.
• Creating greater opportunities for access to markets for equipment manufacturers in order to encourage competition and innovation.
• Encouraging a global vendor community that allows domestic purchasers of ITS equipment to access the greatest availability of high quality products at competitive prices.
• Facilitating cross-border information sharing and opportunities to improve the free flow of goods and people.

To accomplish this, ITS-JPO will cooperate with international partners to identify areas of interest for harmonization and develop a general course to harmonize ITS standards. For the period covered by this strategic plan, the primary focus will be on standards that support vehicle connectivity.

Basic Concepts for Harmonizing International Standards

ITS-JPO and its modal partners have developed a set of basic concepts to guide their involvement in international ITS harmonization. These concepts are:

• Establish, with respective international government partners, a need and desire to evaluate and harmonize standards.
• Establish, with respective governments and representative SDOs, agreements on the process and resources to use.
• Form a task force to execute the work.
• Conduct high-level evaluations to determine candidate standards for harmonization and to create a prioritization list for detailed assessment.
• Conduct a detailed assessment on candidate standards to determine extent of variation between candidate standards.
• Propose recommendations for harmonization based on detailed assessment and feedback from SDOs.
• Involve SDO partners, working group chairs (involved with the development of domiciled ITS-JPO sponsored ITS standards), and subject matter experts.
• Using this input, review the detailed assessment and recommendations and determine level of involvement and funding (based upon harmonization proposal assessment criteria). This determination will also include an assessment for ongoing involvement at international ITS standards bodies, market potential in the United States, impact to U.S. constituents, and the role for the ITS-JPO involvement due to industry environment.