Intelligent transportation systems: What do publications and patents tell us?

Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) have attracted much attention and have seen rapid growth since their first mention in the 1980s. As substantial efforts by both the public and private sectors have gone into the ITS field, tracking its progress and evaluating its development have become essential to transportation researchers, investors, and policy-makers. To this end, we first developed a comprehensive database of ITS publications and patents. Then we used time series analysis and content analysis on ITS-related publication and patent documents to understand general trends in ITS, the impact of federal ITS programs, the development of ITS across individual subfields, and clustering of ITS technologies. The results provide insights into academic research, commercially motivated innovation activities, and the status of ITS-related technologies.