What Is Telematics? – Its Origin And Applications

What Is Telematics?

Telematics or teleinformatics is a scientific and technical discipline that emerges from computer systems and telecommunications’ study and application areas. Telematics is therefore interested in all computer data transmission systems, from the Global Positioning System (GPS) to the various types of data transmission over the Internet.

As will be seen, this is a vast area of knowledge. Still, by and large, it involves the design, evaluation, management and application of communication models for the transport and storage of information based on three different fundamental ones smart sheet plans or perspectives:

The user’s aircraft. Dedicated to the distribution and processing of final information;

The signalling and control level. To process the information relevant to the system itself and its interaction with the user for decision making;

The management level is dedicated to managing the system’s operational and administrative information and its interaction with network operators.

These three levels form a global model, and each divides into subsystems called protocol instances, which group the various functions that interconnect different systems require.

Origin Of Telematics

The term “telematics” results from the union of “telecommunications” and “computing” .

It represents a cross between these two fields of study. The word was coined in France in 1976 in a government report known as the Nora Minc Report entitled “The Computerization of Society.”

The origin of this field of study has different names depending on the university and can called in Anglo-Saxon.

For example, Computing and Communications or Communication (Computer + Communications). In many countries, however, the name “Telematic Engineering” is prefer.

What Is Telematics For?

On the one hand, telematics deals with the technical or material aspect of the interconnection of computer systems.

And it is vital in today’s globalize world, so dependent on transactions and communications over long distances.

On the other hand, it encompasses humanistic, social, and political application applications that cannot be secondary to technological criteria.

Such as everything related to tele-education, e-commerce, electronic administration (e-government), services massive content and information, and so on.

Telematics Applications

The applications of telematics have to do, for now, with:

The design of computer networks and better remote data transmission systems.

The application of the Internet to many aspects of daily life, allowing the facilitation and abbreviation of procedures.

Improvement of the transmission quality of existing networks through the incorporation of new strategies or new materials.

Design new mechanisms for data collection or information transmission, allowing more inform decisions to  made in different areas: industrial, business, political, etc.

Advantages Of Telematics

The development of telematics brings with it essential advances in technology and computation, which allows, among other things:

It reaches critical levels of automation or remote control, which translates into the possibility of carrying out tasks with a minimum of human risk.

Increase productivity and business visibility through new information-gathering strategies and, therefore, decision-making.

It develops new forms of social bond and economic transaction, allowing to overcome great distances efficiently and quickly.

Disadvantages Of Telematics

The possible disadvantages of telematics are not a consequence of this discipline but depend on how we human beings use it.

For example, it can strengthen worrying aspects of our behavior such as the social isolation of future generations and the destruction of jobs replaced by remote control networks.

It could use to design police and repressive protocols that serve to subdue people politically. As in many other technologies, these possible consequences of telematics depend more on the ethical and moral aspect of the profession than on the content itself in which it interest.