Autonomic systems design for ITS applications

This paper discusses a systems design approach inspired from the autonomic nervous system for ITS applications. This is done not with reference to the employed computing system, but to the requirements of traffic engineering applications. It is argued that the design and development of autonomic traffic management systems must identify the control loop that needs to be endowed with autonomic properties and subsequently use this framework for defining a desired set of self-* properties. A macroscopic network modelling application is considered for showing how autonomic systems design can be used for defining and obtaining self-* properties, with particular emphasis given in self-optimisation.