"NTCIP Made Easy" Comes of Age...

The NTCIP community has recently celebrated the 10 year anniversary of NTCIP. It has been a time for those of us who are deep inside this effort to reflect on what has been achieved during that time -- and what still needs to be done in this next cycle of progress.

Successes: The great successes of the program include the following highlights:

1. Universal adoption in highway Dynamic Message Signs in US highway applications. This effort has proved to be the “poster child” of NTCIP goals of interoperability and interchangeability. Thousands of signs have been deployed, in hundreds of jurisdictions, with relative ease of integration. It is reflected by the big question of 5 years ago “How do I know that my NTCIP Central software will display a message on the NTCIP sign?” being replaced with “What message am I going to put on my NTCIP sign with my NTCIP Central software?” This reflects the effectiveness of NTCIP efforts in the sign market segment.
2. The roll out of the device standards. Standards have been produced in many of the market segments, including signal controllers, electronic signs, weather stations, CCTV cameras, ramp meter controllers, traffic sensors, traffic count and classification devices and others. This is an enormous body of work, that provides a consistent way for these device types to work together to provide an integrated ITS system.
3. The market maturity. The commitment of the FHWA and state agencies to the NTCIP effort in terms of requiring the deployment of NTCIP conformant devices has resulted in the growth of a mature NTCIP industry. Most consultants, systems integrators, and manufacturers are now familiar with the standards and are experienced in the deployment of these devices. In the early days, there was an air of uncertainty about the process, which led to nervousness on all sides. A mature testing industry has developed, with a number of testing tools (including our DeviceTester) and testing resources becoming available due to market demand. A future newsletter will be devoted to the current “state-of-the-art” for ITS testing…

Unexpected Successes: During the roll-out of NTCIP and the growth of Intelligent Devices over the last six years, we have seen several unexpected benefits of the adoption of NTCIP, including:

1. The Large International Footprint. There are a number of countries with vigorous NTCIP efforts and communities. Some, like Canada and Mexico, one can easily understand due to the geographical proximity to the USA. On a wider basis China, South Africa, Chile, Brazil, Greece, Hong Kong, the Middle East and others have all adopted NTCIP as standards and have deployed and integrated NTCIP devices. This international endorsement of NTCIP, purely on its practical and technical merits, is a validation for those of us in the NTCIP community who believe that it can provide a major role in the accelerated deployment of ITS technologies. This international flavor of NTCIP was confirmed by the NTCIP Coordinator Bruce Schopp at the last Joint Committee meeting. Bruce reported on the “hits” on the NTCIP web Site by country and the large amount of international activity in downloading various NTCIP documents.
2. A number of deployment efforts in the USA and other countries have made use of a “little understood” benefit of NTCIP in simplifying the Planning Process. We all understand that NTCIP allows procurement authorities to purchase devices and software from multiple vendors and deploy these devices in a system (“interchangeability”).  We also understand that these devices can be deployed with each other on the same communication environment without any device adversely affecting another (“interoperability”). However, the fact that the deployment of devices can be widely separated in time, and deployed in phases, has been one of the most significant benefits of the adoption of NTCIP. This more than anything has accelerated the deployment of NTCIP, with signs, communication, sensors and central software deployed as separate commercial phases, as budgets allow. To read more on this topic, click here …

Difficulties: In the ten years that we have been involved with the deployment of NTCIP systems, there have been very few difficulties in recent times in the adoption, interpretation and deployment of the standards. Some initial “teething trouble” issues were encountered by the early adopters, but these issues have not been significant, considering the complexity of some of the devices and systems involved. It is interesting that the most significant problem of all has come from within our community, in keeping revisions of the standards backwards compatible with previous versions. In particular, some well meaning (but ill advised) revisions to the 1201 Standard (“Global Objects”) caused some incompatibility in deployed systems. However, in recent years the NTCIP Joint Committee has been rigorous in ensuring that new releases of the standards will play well with previous releases, which preserves the goals of NTCIP and the installed base of devices and systems. The specific issues related to the incompatibility of the 1201 standards are well understood now and the damage done has been limited.

The Next Five Years: What does the future of NTCIP hold? Well, the prognosis over the next period is excellent. The community remains vigorous, with the NTCIP meetings well attended. Passionate debate flows on all sorts of topics, including the future of NTCIP. So watch this space, as we’ll continue to bring news of NTCIP to you from our positions on the various NTCIP committees, including my seat on the Joint Committee.

Aspects Often Missed: Aspects are often missed in the deployment of ITS systems that relate to all the human engineering aspects of the technology. We in the community often forget that our users are often non-technical humans and not “NTCIP experts”. Click here for a check list on ”aspects often missed” in the deployment of ITS systems.

Featured Case Study:
Held over to next time… "North Dakota DOT Leads the Way in Portable Variable Message Sign Integration". but you can read it now from here …

Intelligent Devices Solutions:
DeviceTester for NTCIP, and our associated Test Procedures and Scripts, is the premier automated tool for verification of NTCIP conformance, with associated functionality and reliability.

Our NTCIP Field Device Controllers are the most widely deployed NTCIP controllers in the industry, by OEM manufacturers as well as legacy field device upgrades.

The Intelligent Control Suite of NTCIP software is becoming the standard for “out-of-the-box” head end solutions.

Intelligent Control Suite running at a Control Center:

Until next time…

Bryan Mulligan

President
Intelligent Devices, Inc.

In This Issue:

Find Us At...

ITE (San Diego)
March 25-28

Traffex (United Kingdom)
April 17-19

ITS Canada (Niagra Falls)
April 29- May 1

www.intelligentdevicesinc.com