Cloud computing is a network access model that aims to transparently and ubiquitously share a large amount of computing resources. These are leased by a service provider to digital customers, usually via the Internet. Due to the increasing number of traffic accidents and dissatisfaction of road users in vehicular networks, the main focus of current solutions provided by intelligent transport systems is to improve road safety and ensure passenger comfort. Cloud computing technologies have the potential to improve road safety and the experience of traveling in ITS by providing flexible solutions (ie alternative routes, traffic light synchronization, etc.) needed by various road safety actors such as the police and disaster and emergency services. In order to improve traffic safety and provide computer services to road users, we propose a new cloud computing model called VANET-Cloud applied to ad hoc vehicular networks. Several transport services provided by VANET-Cloud are reviewed, and some future directions for research are highlighted, including security and privacy, data aggregation, energy efficiency, interoperability, and resource management.
Cloud computing is a new model of computing that makes use of sets of physical computing resources known as data centers. These can be organized on demand into a dynamic logical entity that can grow or shrink over time, usually over the Internet versus a leased resource rate. Three categories of digital services can be provided: software as a service (eg emergency management applications, road maintenance, electronic payment and pricing), infrastructure as a service (processing, storage, bandwidth, etc.) and platform as a service (eg, language programming, operating systems). Cloud computing uses virtualization technology in which a physical resource in the cloud can be divided into logical or virtual resources as needed.