Autonomic Systems Design for ITS Applications: Modelling and Route Guidance

This chapter discusses a systems design approach inspired from the autonomic nervous system for intelligent transportation system (ITS) applications. This is done not with reference to the employed computing system but with reference to the requirements of traffic engineering applications. It is argued that the design and development of autonomic traffic management systems must identify the control loop that needs to be endowed with autonomic properties and subsequently use this framework for defining a desired set of self-* properties. A macroscopic network modelling application is considered for showing how autonomic system design can be used for defining and obtaining self-* properties, with particular emphasis given on self-optimisation. The interpretation of policies followed by network operators regarding route guidance is also discussed from the perspective of autonomic ITS.