Future trends of ITS in difficult times: A message from the new Editor‐in‐Chief of IET Intelligent Transport Systems

It is a great pleasure and honour for me to take on the responsibility as the new Editor-in-Chief of the IET Intelligent Transport Systems journal from April 2020. My first words are of gratitude and recognition to my predecessor in the position, Prof. Margaret Bell. She took the reins of the journal four years ago, and she has made it grow in every way, adapting the management structure to be able to take on the increasing number of manuscripts received, and increasing the impact of the journal year after year, until leaving it at the doors of the second quartile. Congratulations on your work, Margaret. You set the bar very high! These amazing results are also thanks to the outstanding team of Deputy Editors-in-Chief and Associate Editors, who represent a well-balanced group of world leaders in our field. For me, each member of the Editorial Board is an ambassador for the journal, who can represent it globally at congresses, symposia and conferences. Please accept in advance my gratitude to all of you for your valuable support. I must also acknowledge the tremendous work that the different authors undertake in the high-quality and impartial peer review carried out in a timely manner. We all value the importance of rapid review and publication as authors, so we can all easily understand that the time an article is under review is a key factor that must be treated with care and affection. Let me finish these introductory words to encourage all those who are interested in joining our team to contact me. It is a good thing to make our editorial team grow, in line with the increasing number of manuscripts received, including energetic and enthusiastic new members. Let me encourage anyone who would like to share their suggestions, comments or views on how to improve the journal, to contact me as well. I will always be open to fruitful discussions. And finally, let me encourage all potential authors to submit your articles to the IET Intelligent Transport Systems journal. It is time to make the journal grow into a high impact factor publication. You can all count on my commitment to do so. Let's do it together! We live in difficult times, from which we can only recover with work, creativity and a more social vision of the world. It is important to learn from our past, and to come out of this new health crisis with memory and without falling into the same mistakes. But it is no less important to move forward and think of new ways of social interaction that will allow us to face future threads with solvency, skill and intelligence, without leaving anyone behind. I sincerely believe that intelligent transport systems (ITS) will play a fundamental role in contexts where it is necessary to adapt our way of life with temporary isolation and social distance measurements to protect ourselves, reducing the need to stop most of the activities. The current level of global mobility in our society today involves that modern pandemics, such as COVID-19, are spreading at speeds never before seen by humanity. Experts suggest confining society to their homes for as long as it takes to flatten the contagion curve and not saturate our public health system. However, in this context, there are many services (apart from health care services and national security) that are still necessary in order not to enter into a total paralysis, from food, pharmacies, energy, telecommunication services, online shopping and supply, etc. All these services require the work of people who must move and transport goods as safely as possible, with a minimum safety distance between individuals. The current level of development of ITS, which the scientific and industrial community has achieved, is a fundamental pillar for making progress on this path. More efficient, adaptable and automated transport will undoubtedly enable us to transform our current society as a whole, facing current and future challenges, including those that put us behind the mirror of our human fragility. Let's face them together. David Fernández Llorca received his MSc and PhD degrees in Telecom. Eng. (2003 and 2008) from the University of Alcalá (UAH), being the recipient of the Best Master Thesis Award by ADA Lectureship Madrid (2004), the Best Academic Record Award by IVECO (2004), several awards in robot competitions (2002–2004), and the Best PhD Thesis UAH (2010). He is Full Professor and Head of the INVETT Research Group. He has been research visitor at the following international institutions/companies: Haptica Ltd (2005, Ireland), Trinity College Dublin (2005–2006, Ireland), Daimler AG (2008, Germany) and York University (2019, Canada) being the recipient of 4 competitive mobility grants. He is the author of more than 120 publications, including 48 international journals and 77 international conferences. He was ranked #1 as the most collaborative author in ITS in Europe during the period 2010–2013. He has supervised 16 research projects and 16 industrial ones. As a researcher he has collaborated in 28 research projects, including 3 European projects, and 18 industrial projects, including collaborations with international companies. He was co-founder of Vision Safety Technologies Ltd, the first spin-off company of UAH (2009). He is co-inventor in 15 patents (10 in exploitation). He has been recipient of the IEEE ITSS Young Researcher Award (2018, under 40), the Young Research Medal of the Real Academia de Ingeniería (2018, under 40), Consejo Social Award (UAH, 2018), Best National Patent Award (UAH, 2017), the Best Team with Full Automation of GCDC 2016, the best Workshop paper at ITSC 2015, the Security Forum I+D+i award (2015), the 2013 IEEE ITSS Outstanding Application Award, the Best Young Researcher Award from UAH in 2013, the Best PhD Award by the UAH in 2008, the Best Research Award in the domain of Automotive and Vehicle Applications in Spain in 2008 and the 3M Foundation Awards under the category of eSafety in 2009. He has participated as expert evaluator for the EC in calls ICT-25-2017 and ICT-09-10-2019-2020, and in the National Program STW in The Netherlands (2015). He is Editor-in-Chief of the IET Intelligent Transport Systems journal (since April 2020), and he has served as Associate Editor of the IEEE Trans. on Intelligent Transp. Syst. (2012–2020) and the Journal of Adv. Transp. (2016–2020). He has participated as a member of the International Program Committee in more than 20 international conferences. He has been co-organiser of three international conferences (Program Chair ITSC19, Special Session Chair ITSC15 and Local Arrangement Chair in IVS12). He organised 2 workshops in international conferences (EUROCAST 2013, 2015). Since 2013, he participates as an expert evaluator for national research certification agencies. He was Vice-Director, International Coordinator, and Responsible of Relations with Industry of the Polytechnic School at the UAH (2017–2019), Vice-Director of the Computer Engineering Department (2013–2017) and Head of the Systems Engineering and Automation area (2012–2017).

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