ITS Australia is expanding its annual Summit next year to offer the world’s ITS community a chance to meet face-to-face.

The ITS World Congress 2023 will be held in China, but Covid travel restrictions mean that the event will be available virtually to international visitors. This would have meant that for the second time in four years there would be no chance for a global gathering, hence Australia stepping in to make its event an international one.

“We know that people want to meet face to face,” ITS Australia CEO Susan Harris told the Highways Voices podcast from Los Angeles. “So what we’re going to be doing in the last week in August next year is we’re inviting all of our ITS colleagues to come to Melbourne for a global ITS Summit.”

ITS Australia delivered what is widely agreed to be one of the very best ITS World Congresses in Melbourne in 2016. “We’re not looking to do a World Congress,” Mrs Harris continued, “This is an opportunity to come together to exhibit and to network and present what you’re doing internationally. But what I just want to give a plug to is the amount of activity that’s taking place in Australia since 2016.”

She also made clear, “We’ll be there to support the ITS World Congress in Suzhou next year, but it’s likely that we’re going to be doing that remotely.”

The ITS Australia Global Summit will take place in the last week of August at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre and a call for papers is already open.

You can hear the whole of the interview on the Highways Voices podcast from LA, sponsored by  GEWI, SWARCO, Nota AI, one.network and Navtech Radar.