The European Union's (EU's) PROMISE co-operative research project aims to offer value-added services to travellers and drivers. These services will be available on GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) networks as well as on the World Wide Web, personal computers (PCs), and pagers. The objective of PROMISE is to give travellers easy access to a range of multimodal travel and traffic information services both before and during their journey. The information provided may include all preferences leading to a final decision on how and when to travel, or it may only make proposals and leave the choice to the user. As research has shown that useability is the main element for the commercial success of such a service, the system has been designed to be user-friendly. The user needs analysis has led to four main conclusions. Information must be current, timely, and specific to the user's locality. The demand for information depends on the user's motives. Users need a wide range of information and services. The special needs of disabled and elderly people have been addressed. PROMISE uses a portable terminal, the Nokia 9000 Communicator. Its architecture is largely based on Internet protocols, and as open as possible to future services and network features.
Samenvatting