Overview

Overview

The Road Transport sector is facing some significant challenges:

• Rising fuel costs
• Increased demand
• Limited road capacity
• Pressure on margins
• Concerns over carbon emissions
• Additional regulation and legislation

CTI, in partnership with a company that specialises in applications for mobile devices, has developed a low cost management system for road transport operators which has been designed to help the sector meet these challenges. Using any GPS-enabled device, including low cost devices such as mobile phones, assets can be located in real time and displayed on Google Maps. The position of any asset can also be displayed against planned stop locations and times, thus enabling reporting on performance against schedules. Data is also archived for auditing and analysis purposes.

Roadmap

CTI continues to adopt new technologies as they emerge, but only where such developments will provide clear and affordable benefits for the clients in particular and the industry sector as a whole. At present, projects are under way in the following areas:

• Coverage: While NextG/3G is the only communication medium utilized at the moment, work is under way to augment the system such that it can operate in areas where GSM coverage is not available. Protocols currently under investigation are satellite and P25.
• Vehicle Statistics: In addition to a vehicle's location, some clients demand reporting on additional vehicle information so as to meet their duty of care as defined under their chain of responsibility guidelines. To meet these requirements, development is taking place to extract vehicle data in order to achieve reporting capability against harsh cornering/braking, speeding, etc.