The economic and social lifestyle of today's society significantly increases mobility in transportation. Many problems, such as traffic congestion, accidents, and environmental pollution, arise as an unavoidable result of increased mobility, particularly in developing transportation systems based on the highway. For this reason, "sustainable transportation", which will reduce negative impacts and support development, is now the common goal of all societies. In order for this to happen, in addition to the spread of non-motorized transportation types (pedestrian and bicycle) in passenger transportation, it is necessary to increase the preferability of public transportation, and effectively provide transportation types and multimodal transfers with low carbon emissions and energy use in freight transportation. Given the scale and complexity of transportation systems, it is difficult to achieve this goal without a serious technology-supported planning and management structure. As a solution, for more than 30 years, developments in different fields, especially information and communication technologies, have been utilized in the field of transportation, in other words, effective and efficient Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) have been developed.

ITS which entered our lives with signaling system applications for the first time in the world, has spread to different areas over time and continued its development with various applications. There are still many application areas under 16 main headings in the ITS classification determined by the United States (USA) Federal Highway Administration. In fact, in the light of developing technologies, issues such as smart vehicles, parking management, alternative fuel, accessibility of private groups, etc. have started to be considered as new areas in the ITS classification on their own.

The ITS experience in Türkiye first started in the 1960s with a limited number of applications but gained momentum much later. New ITS applications have become widespread with the developments in information and communication technologies and the increase in internet access, in the early 2000s.

One of the issues addressed by ITS Türkiye has been the scientific and measurement-based assessment of the investments and practices that have been made so far and planned to be made in the future in order to ensure a fast, radical and effective development in the field of ITS and the impact that will be created in this way. However, even in the world literature, where different assessments have been made for more than twenty years, tthere is no universally accepted method in the assessment process of ITS deployments where regional differences can be taken into consideration. For this reason, under the leadership of ITS Türkiye, BILTIR Research Center of Middle East Technical University (METU) and Istanbul Okan University support "ITS Assessment Index Development R&D Project" has been initiated. The main objective of this study is to present a comprehensive method in which ITS practices and experiences can be observed and evaluated together in the light of international literature, and to develop an index structure that can be a pioneer for developing countries such as Türkiye.

The first phase of the project was completed and presented as a report. This report can be accessed from the ACTIVITIES menu or directly can be reached by clicking Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Assessment Index Development R&D Project Final Report.