Originating as a Government research programme, the initiative is now managed by a community forum, the UTMC Development Group, which represents both local transport authorities and the systems industry.
The idea behind UTMC is to maximise road network potential to create a more robust and intelligent system that can be used to meet current and future management requirements.
During the first three years, a number of research projects were undertaken to establish and validate an approach based on modular systems and open standards.
In 2006, the UTMC community ran a number of special sessions at the ITS World Congress held in London, as well as running a village of suppliers demonstrating UTMC-compatible products.
Example by Mott MacDonald: Car Park Guidance in Edinburgh [5] Previously these systems would have been impracticable due to the sheer volumes of data processing and the operator time needed to apply constant manual updates.
The JCG was created in 2004 to bring together the UDG with other key ITS community organisations; it was later expanded to include representation from the Department for Transport and the Highways Agency.
UTMC builds on a base of mainstream internet protocols, and focusses on defining data structures suitable for exchange between ITS systems and devices.