Costs and benefits of cooperative ITS for road authorities: the COBRA decision-support tool

The COBRA project aims to help road authorities to position themselves to realise the potential offered by developments in Vehicle-to-Infrastructure cooperative systems. It does so by providing insights into the costs and benefits of investments, both from a societal perspective and a business case perspective. These insights are provided on the basis of a decision support tool, which enables costs and (monetised) benefits of cooperative services to be compared in various contexts. This paper describes the project methodology, namely the scenarios available for selection and the types of benefits and costs included in the tool. This paper also includes a summary of some example results, which demonstrate the scope and capabilities of the tool and the relative influence of different types of factors on the case for investment. There is a high-level assessment of the benefits that may be achieved for road authorities, including potential cost savings.