A Seminar on Intelligence Transportation Systems Organized by NCAI in Collaboration with KICS UET and IEEE Computer Society at Punjab University Lahore

A Seminar on Intelligence Transportation Systems Organized by NCAI in Collaboration with KICS UET and IEEE Computer Society at Punjab University Lahore

A seminar on ‘Intelligence Transportation Systems (ITS)’was organized by National Center of Artificial Intelligence (NCAI), University of the Punjab’ in collaboration with IEEE Computer Society Lahore Section and Al-Khawarazmi Institute of Computer Science (KICS) UET Lahore. It was held on 15^th February 2019 at Allama Iqbal Campus in University of the Punjab, Lahore. A good attendance from researchers, students and officials was seen there. Post the welcome note delivered by Dr. Waqar ul Qounain (Director, NCAI and Assistant Professor Artificial Intelligence and Multidisciplinary Research Laboratory), A talk was presented on the topic of ‘Intelligent Transportation Systems – Introduction, Implementation and Integration (3I)’by Dr. Muhammad Alam, Assistant Professor CS and SE Xi’am Jiaotong Liverpool University (Suzhou, China). Where he discussed various issues related to ITS, Dr. Alam also talked about potential research directions. He explained Technology Choice, ITS and IoT relation, Realtime ITS, Autonomous Vehicles, Traffic and Travel Management, Smart City Integration and Smart City and ITS Integration. He briefed about all the above technologies in relation with ITS.

Dr. Muhammad Alam then discussed how in a smart city, ITS can be integrated intelligently? He told that with this technology, people and all activities happening in the city will be closely monitored and then the people would be informed if there are any kinds of dangers so that they can avoid them.

Next talk was on the topic of ‘Intelligent Driver Agent – A Way Forward for Intelligent Transportation Systems’ by Mian Muhammad Mubasher. He quite elaborately discussed the subjects linked to ITS such as socio-economic significance, transportation systems approach and intelligent transportation system. He then talked on road accidents which are witnessed quite in abundance in our daily routines. He told that the road accidents happen in plenty in the world and majority of them lead to deaths. He suggested that death toll had to be lesser or at least to 50 percent. The speaker then showed the figure of death toll happened in Pakistan last year and it was simply astonishing as the death toll reached to 36,000 in 2018. That was simply shocking. Further transportation system was discussed in which he made an equation ‘system = infrastructure + vehicles’. He then expressed the goals which had to be set to avoid these situations and hazards. They included ‘safety, mobility, capacity, productivity and environment’.

He then expressed that a focus had to be put on infrastructure and traffic. For infrastructure, maintenance development and travel demand management need to be done, explained by Mian Muhammad Mubasher. He suggested that for making traffic in order, a need to conduct training, do evaluation and spread awareness is required.

Further intelligence transportation systems, components of ITS, advanced traffic management systems, advanced public transport systems, automatic road enforcements, advanced vehicle control systems, significance of computational methods, simulation of traffic, decision modeling and intelligent driver modeling were discussed.

Attendees liked the seminar and took deep interest in all talks happened there.

Post the seminar, a technical meeting was organized at faculty room of PUCIT. The topic of the meeting was ‘Realization of Intelligent Transportation Systems in Pakistan’. Dr. Syed Waqar ul Qounain (Director NCAI, Punjab University) was the moderator. Dr. Alam exchanged his views on ITS and revealed that an interest had developed among the people for Intelligent Transportation System and now it had to raised further to get its advantages. He suggested that Bachelors and Masters level students should take on board for their research on ITS and relevant subjects. He also suggested conducting international level conferences on this subject to spread more awareness about it. The moderator and the guests (participants) of the meeting agreed on his suggestion. Dr. Waqar told that he had received grants to conduct research on ITS. He also mentioned that he could hire people and could also extend this grant from HEC. He gave reference of IEEE’s support in this regard. Muzammil Hassan, Senior Researcher and Assistant Manager at SSRL KICS, expressed about the grants KICS UET so far had received and discussed KICS ongoing projects which got attention among the public and private sectors. Other participants also mentioned their views on ITS.

The attendees of the seminar were conferred with the certificates by Dr. Alam and Dr. Waqar.