In Finland, the Finnish Transport Agency is implementing the NordicWay2 project’s Finnish activities together with the Finnish Transport Safety Agency Trafi. The project is also part of the Finnish Traffic Lab collaboration. The Finnish deployment of the project comprises two activities: the C-ITS deployment pilot and the Arctic Challenge study concerning road transport automation in arctic snowy and icy conditions.

The C-ITS deployment part of NordicWay2 covers piloting and evaluating cooperative and connected Safety Related Traffic Information (SRTI) services such as weather conditions and other hazard information notifications in Finland. Hybrid communication using mainly a cellular network is applied during the pilot.  NordicWay2 will continue the work of the earlier NordicWay project (more information later on this page) by piloting interoperable relevant SRTI Day 1 and Day 1.5 C-ITS services and higher-level automated driving on a larger part of the Nordic road network. Day 1 services refer to such C-ITS services that are expected to be available in the short term because of their expected societal benefits and the maturity of technology. Day 1.5 services are such that might not be completely ready for large-scale deployment, even if they are generally considered to be mature.

In addition to their traffic safety enhancing effect, in the future, automated vehicles may also benefit from using C-ITS services, as the services may provide vehicles with, e.g., information that will be relevant for their driving task.

The developments made in Finland regarding C-ITS services will be interoperable with the developments made elsewhere in Europe, as the aforementioned SRTI messages are harmonised using European standards by collaborating with the C-Roads Platform (www.c-roads.eu).

As mentioned earlier, a study regarding road transport automation in arctic and snowy conditions is also being carried out under the NordicWay2 project in Finland. The study was being conducted in the Arctic Challenge project, in theAurora test ecosystem. 

The first NordicWay project has ended, and the first results have been published (see links below).

NordicWay was a pilot project with the objective of enabling vehicles to communicate safety hazards through hybrid communication, mainly using cellular networks on road corridors through Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. The Finnish Transport Agency (FTA) represented Finland in the project, along with the Finnish Transport Safety Agency Trafi and HERE. In addition to the aforementioned stakeholders in Finland, traffic authorities from Sweden, Norway and Denmark participated in the piloting of a compatible intelligent corridor. The project was a collaboration between public and private partners in the four countries, and it was also co-financed by the European Union within the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) programme 2015-2017.

In May 2017, the one-year Finnish pilot NordicWay Coop ended. In the pilot, 1,300 vehicle drivers taking part in the pilot were able to send information about abnormal conditions such as accident sites and obstacles along their way with their smart phones. In response, the participants also received warnings and information on their smart phones from other participants and the Traffic Management Centre (TMC).

The most important achievement of NordicWay has been the development of the NordicWay Interchange node and network concept allowing national traffic management centres, vehicle manufacturers and service providers to share warnings and information across borders with low latency, while ensuring the privacy and cybersecurity of individual users. The concept is based on open and standardised solutions, making it feasible throughout the world.

The Final Event for NordicWay was held on November 21st 2017 in Brussels, Belgium. The materials of the event can be found here. The presented results indicate that information on safety hazards can be exchanged over cellular network quickly, safely and effectively - and across country borders, as in May 2017 the project also successfully demonstrated the interoperability of the NordicWay solution in the border regions between Sweden and Norway as well as Sweden and Denmark.

The NordicWay-project has beed described on presentation videos, which you can watch below. There are two versions, the first of which a more concise one (approx. 3 minutes) and the latter a longer one (6 minutes).