ITS and economic growth: investment, stakeholders, and relations Chapter | 8 97
on geographical, demographic, political, economic, social, and technological
factors, it is important to consider them jointly and plan the most appropriate
solution per case. This task requires a complete intervention that comprises the
planning, implementation, and evaluation of various transports infrastructure
modules and their smooth integration and operation optimization. The benefit
from this is directly visible since transport holds a large chunk of the gross
domestic product pie of each country. As a result, any attempt to bring trans-
portation forward and improving the respective infrastructure and services has
fruitful results on the national economy.
Many believe that improving the transport infrastructure in a country incurs
the construction of new roads or the reconstruction of existing ones. However,
the future of infrastructure is based on the implementation of new technological
systems in collaboration with conventional infrastructure projects. New sen-
sor systems, recording base stations, processing, and information will govern
the new transport infrastructures in modern societies. In fact, transport systems
mainly refer to networks, and the importance of networks lies behind the infor-
mation they contain. This information should reach out to infrastructure users
by providing them with the means to improve the timing of their journey, its
quality, and so on, reducing its cost of implementation.
Tourism is another area that will benefit from the implementation of ITS
in a country. Essentially, through facilitating the accessibility and provision of
information on how to best travel internationally and nationally, travel times
and schedules can be improved, comfort levels can be increased and safety dur-
ing public transport can also be enhanced. The analysis of the benefits from the
application of ITS-related technologies in an area shows that apart from people
mobility will be beneficial for freight too and will make a country even more
competitive in the field of transport worldwide. This will create new financial
resources and will ultimately increase the national GDP and income. Also, due
to the reduction in the times of movement of goods and services, prices can be
reduced, which is very encouraging of the prevailing inflation.
8.2 Investments in ITS
There are various ways of assessing the impact of investment in ITS on eco-
nomic development. Some of them are listed below and range from theoretical
research to simulation and small-scale applied case studies.
• Assessment through polls and online surveys that target domain experts and
economists.
• Benefit-cost analysis of the investment.
• Cost-effective analysis.
• Multi-factor analysis.
• Evaluation of small-scale case studies.
• Development of input-output models.
• Development and simulation of dynamic models for various scenarios.