Enabling geographic data exploitation for the Cooperative, Connected and Automated Mobility

Urbanization is imposing radical changes in the planning and management of cities compared to those in which we are used to living. The Smart City concept is based on the IoT and aims to resolve the critical issues of today's cities, identified by six macro areas. Among them, Smart Mobility promotes the connection between vehicles and road infrastructures and relies on cooperation by sharing relevant sensor information. However, a sensor-based approach could not be very robust, as the hardware could fail or the data analysis could provide incorrect information. This thesis deals with geographic data management (GIS) within Cooperative and Connected Automated Mobility (CCAM). The main idea is to leverage geographic data to support drivers and traffic operators in making smart, safe, and sustainable decisions. This project focuses on creating a software framework called Geographic Map Information Provider (GMIP), capable of providing access to geographic data to be exploited in CCAM contexts, such as onboard units (OBU), roadside units (RSU), and traffic control centers (TCC). The framework provides services and tools for querying and viewing geographic information, acting as an interface to the data made available by map providers. In particular, the adoption of this solution allows the integration of multiple map providers within GMIP, thus enabling a provider-agnostic approach. The development centralizes on bringing innovation by implementing new additional advanced features that could be helpful to a large number of real-world use cases in the C-ITS field. From the architectural point of view, GMIP comprises three main components: server, client, and storage. The server side embraces a modular design composed of several Docker containers for exposing RESTful microservices to CCAM applications. The comparison of multiple web frameworks has anticipated the implementation of the services to choose the most promising and guarantee a flexible and optimized solution to be integrated into embedded systems. On the client side, GMIP focuses more on providing tools to TCC operators. It comprehends a web application for managing and visualizing ETSI C-ITS messages through an HMI. Moreover, the database component stores both server and client-side configurations. Concluding, a final validation step has verified the framework's advanced features by implementing some significant usage scenarios.