Towards Operational Technology Monitoring in Intelligent Transportation Systems: Key Challenges and Research Roadmap

Efficient and safe operation of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) has significant impact on the life of citizens and economies. A wide range of technologies, aka. Operational Technologies (OT) (e.g., sensors, actuators or network routers), are employed for monitoring and controlling the operation of ITS, being, due to the convergence with Information Technology (IT), more and more based on the Internet-of-Things (IoT) paradigm. Monitoring the service quality of OT, i.e., Operational Technology Monitoring (OTM), is a crucial prerequisite for ensuring efficient and safe operation. OTM from an industry perspective, however, faces some challenges, which are, despite their importance for ITS operators, not sufficiently addressed by now. In this realm, the contribution of this paper is threefold: Firstly, aiming at gaining insight into the state of practice of OTM in ITS, we discuss OTM based on an exemplary scenario of a national highway network and identify three key challenges, namely (1) interoperability, (2) service quality monitoring, and (3) evolution of OT. Secondly, in order to address these challenges, we identify promising lines of research relevant for OTM. Thirdly, based thereupon, we sketch out a research roadmap striving towards the vision of an evolution-aware semantic framework enhancing OTM in ITS.