A Framework for Appraising European Member States' Readiness Level for eCall Deployment

This work provides a general overview of the main findings of two European projects, HeERO and HeERO2 aimed at facilitating the implementation of the eCall in-vehicle emergency call service in Europe. The representatives of 15 European Member States (MS) participated in the project's activities with the objective to demonstrate the functioning of the eCall. The projects identified several layers that form the eCall value chain. Based on these layers, a questionnaire was prepared and presented to MS representatives to identify the main barriers and enablers at country level. The results of the survey were used in the project to create the guidelines and recommendations for eCall deployment. The main contribution of the paper consists of the evaluation of the HeERO MS readiness level to implement eCall. To this aim, a set of evaluation criteria are measured based on the answers provided by the MS representatives. Furthermore, two multicriteria approaches are selected and implemented: the PROMETHEE and the PAPRIKA methods that consist in performing pairwise comparisons of alternatives. The outcome of the analysis is a ranking of HeERO countries based on their readiness level to implement eCall by October 2017, which is the mandatory deadline that has been set up by the European Commission.