A couple of years ago the World Economic Forum and Boston Consulting Group got together to come up with solutions to improve traffic, travel, transport and trade.
Following on from a hefty body of work unveiled last year and identifying four ways to transform travel by 2025, the organisations have unveiled a new Connected World report looking at the challenges and opportunities of putting some of the technology in place.
The two biggest barriers, security concerns and collaboration, are highlighted throughout and pretty major in terms of the required sharing of data and "public-private agreement".
Anyway, treating the three Ts individually (we won't go into trade), the study sets out what's needed and what the benefits might be:
Travel
You only have to look at arguments from various parties on where to add runway capacity in London, for example, to get a grip on the impact on economic growth and productivity of delays and cancellations. The report cites the cost of such disruption to 12 major US airports alone at up to $20 billion by 2020.
The solution is for travel companies, airlines, airports etc to share data on elements including capacity and pricing and work together to create global standards.
Progress on IATA's New Distribution Capability will be interesting to follow in terms of whether the industry, just in the airline sector, wants to and can truly collaborate.
Integrated Proactive Intermodal Travel Assistant (IPITA) - in common language, a service for the planning, booking and updating of travel - was the solution put forward last year. This year, companies such as Google, Desti (recently acquired by Nokia), Rome2Rio, Worldmate and others, are identified as developing in this area.
Transport
The greatest barrier to improving and making for a more seamless experience in international transport is security concerns, according to the report.
At a very basic level, what's needed is common approaches to visa applications and border crossings, using more biometric identification, automated check-in and smart visas.
And, the cost benefit in terms of an increase in tourism by 2015 IF governments and organisations, public and private, can work together?
Somewhere in the region of hefty $40 billion to $200 billion.
Fully-automated check-in, security and border control/smart visa (ACIS) was highlighted in last year's report as the way forward with projects already ongoing such as smart counters and eGates at Dubai International Airport.
The initiative uses biometric identification (iris, finger and facial) to speed passengers through security/immigration, which has dropped to less than 20 seconds per passenger (pre-registered).
Traffic
Imagine a city with no congestion, where real time data analysis is used to manage traffic, both public and private. The benefit of an effective traffic management system are said to range from $2 billion to $10 billion.
Condition-based megacity traffic management system (COMET) was the solution proposed last year an operations centre staffed by more than 400 people in Rio de Janeiro is highlighted in the report as one example of progress in this area.
Also worth looking back at the videos created last year to explain IPITA, ACIS and COMET.