Project 5G-SAFE-PLUS

Abstract

An effectively operating safe road network is an essential requirement for any community. The EU has a vision of close to zero casualties in traffic by 2050. The 5G-Safe-Plus project aims to prevent traffic accidents and avoid casualties by delivering 5G-enabled time-critical road safety services to vehicles. Here, accurate weather and road maintenance information (esp. local road weather data) plays a key role together with direct incident/accident event information. The project will support wide-scale implementation and usage of advanced road weather, road maintenance and road safety services with enhanced 5G networking capabilities and service enablers. Today’s vehicle instrumentation data (incl. cameras) allows various advanced services (e.g. drifting/running snow, hard wind, heavy rain or slippery road detection), benefitting the meteorological forecasting process as well as optimizing the maintenance of the roads. On the other hand, similar services may be utilized by automated vehicles (cars, trucks, busses, miniature vehicles etc.) to enhance safety, especially, in challenging weather or road conditions. So far, the adoption of such services has, nevertheless, suffered from insufficient communication media and 5G is expected to bring the first scalable solution to it. To ensure smooth transition to a “5G world” and to maximize the reliability, the project considers hybrid network environments, including 4G/LTE, 5G, ITS-G5 and satellite communication, for example. The idea is that the vehicles are connected to each other, the roadside infrastructure and cloud-based services always through the most optimal means of communications. For supporting the strict real-time requirements of the envisioned services and ensuring scalability, the solution includes means for local processing (e.g. fog/edge) and information aggregation. Finally, information security plays a key role as well and it will be considered by design in the overall solution. The overall solution and services will be validated in pilot constructions hosted by the partners in several countries.