Emerging Technologies in Transportation Systems: Challenges and Opportunities

Emerging technologies have been used as a complementary tool to solve different problems that modern society faces every day. One area where the emerging technologies have a big opportunity is transportation. As cities become larger, the number of vehicles and the need for transportation is growing quickly. In this sense, the modern society is facing more traffic congestion, higher fuel bills and the increase of CO2 emissions. It is imperative to improve and develop a sustainable transportation system that uses in a better way the existing infrastructure and that infrastructure have to be complemented with the application of emerging technologies. This work gives readers a global vision of traffic and transportation issues and how merging technologies contribute to solve transportation problems. In addition, it analyzes some of the emerging technologies and how each technology might be used to improve transportation systems. Finally, a classification of applications for transportation systems is explained and some real applications that are being developed in both academic and industrial environment are described.