Implementing ITS 3.0 Applications by Integrating Ruby on Rails, Sesame and Protegè Technologies

As known, the new generation of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs) is evolving towards a geo-referenced semantic system, denoted in the paper as ITS 3.0, highly permeated by the Web 3.0 technology. More explicitly, ITS 3.0 is a set of databases dealing with geospatial, administrative and business information to be interconnected by a standard data scheme to allow mobile users to access the relevant ITS information through a suitable geo-referenced semantic interface. Although many models have been proposed for semantically structuring the main location based services by means of conceptual taxonomies or entity relations, few real ITSs work in this way. Thus, aim of the paper is to discuss how effective semantic ITSs can be implemented in practice by three technologies: the first devoted to implement user centered processes (Ruby on Rails), the second aiming at integrating the disparate data sources featuring the ITS applications by a suitable data ontology (Protege), the third to provide the user processes with the needed data (Sesame). Both theoretical considerations and practical issues will be taken into account to build safe and live ITS applications that meet the user practices.