EDITORIAL

March 2015, Number 3
EDITORIAL
Focus Groups in TISAR project
The TISAR platform
will give information
on available public
transport
solutions
combined in a seamless multimodal journey planning.
Establishment of 11
focus groups, one in
each region involved.
The project is implementing an ICT platform where public transport and journey
planning data will be merged and made available in the languages of the IPA Countries. The TISAR platform will give information on available public transport solutions
combined in a seamless multimodal journey planning. The project involves public
authorities of different countries of the Adriatic region and 2 technology partners
with strong experience in the ITS sector.
Thanks to the presents of technological partners, TISAR proposes actual realization
of a platform based to the European standards and adapted to local travel planning systems already detected during the definition phase of the project proposal.
The institutional worktable will deal with the dissemination of local policy discussions at European level, showing real results of information and integration.
Eleven focus groups have been constituted, one by each beneficiary and each focus
groups have been composed by 30 users selected by the partners. The selection of
components haa followed a tested methodology, already used in other projects.
The first phase consists in the design of an Invitation Letter to be delivered to potential users. The letter is structured in the following parts: Project Presentation, Purpose of the participation , Collaboration requested.
Hot dates
30th April 2015
The selection of users have been in charge of partners that will translate and disseminate via web, email or other supporting tools the Invitation Letter.
The number of expected participants per each focus groups is at least 30.
Reporting activity
20th May 2015
VI Steering Group
meeting
(Dubrovnik, CROATIA)
21st May 2015
WP4 & WP5 Joint
meeting
(Dubrovnik, CROATIA)
Index Newsletter 3

Transnational workshop on Territorial Marketing

TISAR local meeting in Sarajevo

Technical Guidelines for TISAR TP development

4th Steering Group: main results and conclusions
March 2015, Number 3
Focus Groups in TISAR project
Purpose of participation
Involving focus groups
in the establishment
of a project baseline,
which represents the
reference
scenario
and as such the
benchmark
against
which comparing the
final one.
Continuous verification (monitoring) of
the process adopted
from the decision taking down to the
platform implementation in each region
and followed by the
participating stakeholders.
In TISAR the primary goal of evaluation is to carry on an appraisal of the potential
impacts induced by the availability of the proposed integrated ICT platform designed to support the planning of seamless travelling across the target region by, on
one side increasing both the attractiveness of and the accessibility to public
transport, overcoming one of the most severe barriers nowadays present, i.e. the
languages, on the other side reducing the impacts over the environments, namely
the CO2 emissions.
In order to reach the goal, evaluation is scheduled to execute a “before and after”
analysis, which is effectively conducted with the support of focus groups that will
help to built a reference scenario (current situation) and the final one (after the
platform implementation).
Collaboration requested
For the establishment of national focus groups it is necessary to individuate at least
30 persons that will participate to the evaluation process responding to the questionnaires (two) and testing the new ICT platform to simulate different travels planning.
Participation modality
Determination of a
final picture, which
represents the concluding
situation
(after) as a result of
the development of
the ICT platform.
The information thus
produced will enable
the evaluation team
to produce both an
impact and process
assessment and lessons learned.
Selected participants will be asked to respond to two questionnaires:
- Baseline scenario, in March 2015
- Ex-post, or platform implemented, scenario, in September 2015 and to test the
new platform.
March 2015, Number 3
Transnational workshop on Territorial Marketing
Completing intermodal connection among
ports
Need for dealing with
different fields in a
systematic way (time,
costs, lack of flexibility, lack of certain
specific
infrastructures, etc.)
Lack of competitiveness of efficiency in
transport and logistic
systems of the Area
The Voluntary Consortium, partner of the TISAR project, has organized the workshop entitled TERRITORIAL MARKETING IN A MULTIMODAL TRANSPORT SYSTEM IN
THE IPA AREA. The partner had the responsibility of being the preferential representative of all project partners about search, collection and processing of data
concerning the state of transport in the Adriatic Macro-Region and also about the
development of a Territorial Marketing Plan for the whole Area.
The workshop was held at the 13th of June 2014 at Castle’s Auditorium, in
Mesagne, Italy.
The main conclusion of the dissemination event were:





Lack of integration
and
coordination
between infrastructures and service
Absence of intermodal corridor to interconnect various destinations of the Adriatic
Macro Region by
means of a transport
mode



The need for completing intermodal connection among ports - back harbours –
airports and network TEN–T;
The need for dealing with different fields in a systematic way (time, costs, lack
of flexibility, lack of certain specific infrastructures, etc.) which actually make
less competitive transport system of goods and people in Adriatic Macro Region;
Lack of competitiveness of efficiency in transport and logistic systems of the
Area;
Lack of integration and coordination between infrastructures and service;
Absence of intermodal corridor to interconnect various destinations of the
Adriatic Macro Region by means of a transport mode, in addition to road transport;
Clear perception of how all Partners of this geographic region, called Adriatic
Macro-Region, feel themselves as part of a possible territorial unicum;
Area as a super-local and macro-regional system, with the declared intention
of designing and building shared facilities;
Idea about the sharing of establishing thematic tourist routes.
March 2015, Number 3
TISAR local meeting in Sarajevo
Project partners involved presented the
key project activities
to the relevant project
stakeholders, representatives of relevant
ministries in Bosnia
and Herzegovina,
transport operators,
representatives of the
railways and local
communities.
TISAR project has introduced a new technological approach in
Sarajevo region and
Bosnia and Herzegovina, which enables
joint promotion of the
cultural, tourism and
business resources
with potential of the
Adriatic region.
Sarajevo Economic Region Development Agency—SERDA and the Ministry of
Transport of the Sarajevo Canton organized a meeting within the WP 4 of the project TISAR on 27 March 2014.
Project partners involved presented the key project activities
to the relevant project stakeholders, representatives of relevant ministries in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, transport operators, representatives of the railways and local communities with
special attention on existing passenger mobility in the region and
the development of IT solutions
and planners for multimodal
mobility passengers.
Participants have been informed about the features of the local Travel Planner that
will be created this year and integrated into the Adriatic passenger platform, which
will integrate all data on passenger mobility in the region.
All participants expressed support to the project activities. The potential of the project is emphasized and all participants agreed on importance of the cooperation
with the Adriatic platform, which will enable a new way of communication between
Sarajevo and other destinations in the Adriatic region and Europe.
All participants agreed that TISAR project has introduced a new technological approach in Sarajevo region and Bosnia and Herzegovina, which enables joint promotion of the cultural, tourism and business resources with potential of the Adriatic
region.
March 2015, Number 3
Technical Guidelines for TISAR TP development
How to proceed to create TISAR web portal to have a seamless
multimodal journey planning to reach a destination in the Adriatic macro region?
Pluservice follows the fundamental activities of Software Engineer for developing
the TISAR platform
Requirements and use cases. Before starting the design and development phase
it is very important to define the aims of the project. Moreover, it is important to
understand the state of the art of each partner because the architecture and some
technical decisions could be affected.
Design. This phase involves different type of persons: designer, user interface designer, technical support such as developers and responsible of data centre/server/
infrastructure. In this phase, all elements must be considered in a unique vision and
frame. The design phase is based on definition of models, high level architecture,
use cases, how the platform needs to work and the solution. Documentations and
schema were provided using UML, Visio and other tools.
Architecture of the TISAR project
TISAR platform is based on a distributed architecture. There are one central web
portal (TISAR web portal) and several local travel planners, one for each TISAR partner. This architecture gives the possibility to add and interface other local travel
planners to the central portal.
The different local travel planners are interfaced to the TISAR web portal thanks to
specific interfaces implemented in each local system. Actually, the TISAR system
searches for solutions between macro-nodes whereas the local travel planners will
be responsible to find last mile solutions related to the specific addresses of origin
and destination. For this reason, the TISAR web portal contains all backbones data
and it can guarantee a quick response to the users. In general, the TISAR web portal
follows this logical flow:
1) Verify if some backbones solutions exist;
2) Combine all solutions in a single and smooth travel solution for end users.
In this way, local travel planners can maintain their own autonomy in terms of: data, organization, network, data centre, DBs, structures, algorithm, etc.
March 2015, Number 3
Hereafter there is a list of potential and main components needed to organize a
fleet and related data useful for a generic Travel Planning System.
This list is just an example and it may be useful for those who want to implement a
travel planner:
 Fleet Scheduling Application and Operative data of different transport modes,


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according to the territory: bus (urban, suburban, long haul line), train, ship,
plane.
DB where backbones data are stored and the related licenses
Cartography and licenses
End User interface (TISAR Web portal)
Data Centre where all SWs and data are allocated
Hereafter, the TISAR logical architecture is defined by 4 different layers to perform
the system:
 Data Sources: GTFS well-formed and local travel planner form TISAR partners
 DataWarehouse: Backbone and information layer
 Applications: Planner Engine, Geo Server, Backoffice
 Presentation: Web portal and App for smartphone
The TISAR web portal will be accessible for the end users at any-time. The portal
and all data should be visualized to allow a good user experience.
The central system does not manage the local travel planners, but it is responsible
to give feedback to the users.
March 2015, Number 3
Test plans. Define some use cases and use them to test the first versions of the
code.
Code. The implementation phase is the translation of the design activities. Debugging and code testing are essential to detect errors referring to some problems
during the programming. Once the code is ready, the functional testing phase can
start. Here, there is the Beta version of the programme.
Test results. This phase can test the quality of the code written by developers.
Field feedback. Feedback from different testers.
If the results and feedback are not what the test plans expected to achieve, it is
needed to solve identified problems/errors/anomalies and return back to the coding phase. If the problems are more serious, it is required to go back to the designing phase. This means having some designing problems due to inaccurate analysis,
new unexpected events or others.
Some words from the Responsible of the developers’ team about
the TISAR project in Pluservice
Which are the main aspects to consider during the developing phase?
It’s important to consider in anytime two aspects: the usability of what the developers are writing and the user experience in order to achieve a good user experience.
Which are the critical issues?
Be careful at the internationalization in each component of the project. The
translation of words in all TISAR partners’ languages also means to maintain the
same semantic content. This is fundamental to reach a good result.
What suggestions would you give to all technicians for each TISAR partner?
Develop according to the main objectives and only through their achievement it is
possible to consider the details or marginal aspects, not functional elements for the
project.
March 2015, Number 3
4th Steering Group: main results and conclusions
On Thursday 12th in Mesagne, Italy, the fourth Steering Group Meeting took place.
In this occasion the partnership has discussed administrative, financial and technical issues about the project TISAR.
WP 1: some administrative delays exist, there is a need for a project extension
that will be requested the following months.
WP 2: the dissemination and communication strategy is a a critical matter and
the project does not present a common strategy, yet.
WP 3: an appropriate document was prepared and all partners were asked to
provide suggestions, in order to make the Tisar platform work. Besides, a questionnaire was sent in order to understand the state of the art of public transport in all
partner areas.
WP 4: This WP looks at the governance structure needed to reach cooperation
among regions, in order to establish the cross-border ICT platform and the main
activities carried out are:
 Methodology for stakeholder involvement. Ministry of traffic of Canton Saraje-
vo in collaboration with the lead partner Marche Region has created a guidebook called ''Methodology for stakeholder involvement'', which has been forwarded to all partners. It has been planed for all the project partners to organize local events, with a notice that it is possible, for partners in the same region,
to joint local event organization .
 Establishment of an international network for institutional actors and transport
companies within the region.
WP 5: this WP needs to be speeded up, otherwise all project and project activities will suffer from a remarkable delay.
WP 6: An Assessment loop was elaborated to evaluate progress in TISAR results
and to eventually readapt the strategy adopted. In addition to that, Marche Region
had been working in the tender necessary to find a company with extensive experience and adequate technical and professional skills related to the specific topic
of multimodal and integrated transport systems.
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