Approach
CIMEC aims to support the efforts by the European Commission in accelerating the take-up of cooperative systems and associated legal, organisational, technical and standardisation issues by enabling "the voice of the cities".


Local dialogue to establish city needs and requirements
Each of the four city partners (Reading, Trondheim, Bilbao and Kassel) will hold local workshops with key officers from the local authority and other local agencies (including public transport operators, freight operators, emergency services and municipal service providers) to define city needs for C-ITS, particularly to:
Promote discussion on how C-ITS could make a useful contribution to the management of the transport network and to other transport-related services.
Discuss preliminary business cases and models and deployment scenarios.

Engagement with suppliers and other C-ITS stakeholders
CIMEC will build an overview of those commercial entities that are active in the C-ITS domain in order to understand what C-ITS enabled products are likely to enter the market place in the first instance.
Workshops will then be arranged to promote discussion among the city authorities, suppliers and other stakeholders (eg, vehicle manufacturers) in order to:
Identify how C-ITS applications can be used to meet local needs.
Gain an understanding of the likely costs and risks of C-ITS.
Determine the areas in which an investment in C-ITS development could be worthwhile.
Build up knowledge on how to incorporate a common C-ITS (sub-) system for the city into an existing infrastructure.
Engage in working towards open standards and systems for C-ITS infrastructure in cities.

A realistic roadmap for the deployment of C-ITS
The goals and constraints of cities, and the product emergence and commercial expectations of suppliers, will be brought together to construct a realistic roadmap for C-ITS deployment in cities. The roadmap will incorporate an evaluation of variations in policy, economics and cultural factors around Europe’s cities. The realism of this roadmap will be tested through detailed review with the partner cities.
Wider engagement
CIMEC will reach out to other local authorities and Member States in order to have a broader basis for gathering user needs and requirements. The four city partners will run a national/regional dissemination workshop in the local language.
In addition, an international pool of cities will be established to enable cities active or interested in C-ITS to follow and provide input to project activities. CIMEC will also cooperate with other similar initiatives, such as the H2020 project CODECS, in order to achieve synergies.
Automation
CIMEC will look into relevant automation solutions that are prioritized by cities in the CIMEC workshops. The roadmap to implementation will take into account solutions for connected automated driving as appropriate, based on the input from the involved cities and suppliers.