In 2010, a first Dagstuhl Seminar (10402) was organized on the topic of inter-vehicular communication. The motivation was to bring together experts in this field to investigate the state of the art and to highlight where sufficient solutions already existed. The main outcome of this very inspiring seminar was that there are indeed areas within this research where scientific findings are being consolidated and adapted by industry. This was the consensus of quite intriguing discussions among participants from both industry and academia. Yet, even more aspects have been identified where substantial research is still needed. These challenges have been summarized in the Dagstuhl report and in the following IEEE Communications Magazine article:

• Falko Dressler, Frank Kargl, Jörg Ott, Ozan K. Tonguz and Lars Wischhof, "Research Challenges in Inter-Vehicular Communication - Lessons of the 2010 Dagstuhl Seminar," IEEE Communications Magazine, vol. 49 (5), pp. 158-164, May 2011.

It will be the goal of this new seminar to again bring together leading researchers both from academia and industry to discuss if and where the previously identified challenges have been adequately addressed, and to highlight where sufficient solutions exist today, where better alternatives need to be found, and also to give directions where to look for such alternatives. Furthermore, it will be the goal of this workshop to go on step beyond and identify where IVC can contribute to the basic foundations of computer science or where previously unconsidered foundations can contribute to IVC. In the first seminar, we had working groups on

• Fundamental Limits of IVC - The leading question of this working groups was, whether we can identify fundamental laws or limits that let us determine what IVC might achieve and what is not achievable using this kind of systems;
• IVC Communication Principles and Patterns - This working group reviewed the current state of the art of communication patterns and principles in IVC systems;
• Security and Privacy in IVC - The focus of this working group was on topics related to security and privacy protection in IVC;
• IVC Simulation and Modeling - This working grouped focused on simulation-based evaluation of IVC and the necessary models.

It turned out that there is substantial research needed on all these topics. This follow-up seminar will get back to these questions and, in intensive discussions also with participants from industry, recap these issues and identify which scientific results have been achieved and which issues are still fundamental research questions. The 2010 Dagstuhl seminar promoted a "top-down" approach to inter-vehicle communications instead of the classical "bottom-up" approach. With the top-down approach, the effects of applications are first analyzed under the assumption that the communication system will be able to support the application. Thus, an "upper bound" can be presented on the benefits of IVC. We will summarize all the scientific work that followed this approach after the previous Dagstuhl seminar and will contrast it with new insights based on field operational tests, safety application design and massively distributed operations. In particular, we intend to shift the focus of this seminar from basic networking principles to applicability in real world scenarios. In the last few years, first field operational tests have been conducted in the US (the Michigan field trial) as well as in Europe (SIM-TD in Germany, DRIVE C2X in Europe). Lessons learned from those tests applied to currently used models and concepts will bring new insights into the forthcoming research challenges. Among others, questions to be studied include the following still unanswered research challenges:

• Data analysis of current field operational tests: are they validating or invalidating current models?
• Safety applications: showstopper or driving force? What are the limitations in terms of latency and reliability of available communication principles for enabling critical safety support;
• From highly distributed to massively distributed operation: can vehicular networking based on DSRC/WAVE also support all the pedestrians and bicyclists?

Eventually, all these questions lead to the big question whether vehicular networking can now be shown to improve efficiency and safety on our streets. We are now in an era that completely changes the game in car manufacturing and road traffic management. Computer science is becoming the key element in the design of these systems. It is of utmost importance to bring in expertise from classical computer science (computer networking, simulation and modeling, operating system design) as well as from electrical engineering (digital signal processing, communication networks) and experts from the automotive industry and from the intelligent transportation community. With this seminar, we aim to bring together experts from all these fields from both academia and industry.

• Natalya An (KIT - Karlsruher Institut für Technologie, DE) [dblp]
• Claudio Casetti (Polytechnic University of Torino, IT) [dblp]
• Wai Chen (China Mobile Research Institute - Beijing, CN) [dblp]
• Falko Dressler (Universität Innsbruck, AT) [dblp]
• David Eckhoff (Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, DE) [dblp]
• Andreas Festag (TU Dresden, DE) [dblp]
• Raphaël Frank (University of Luxembourg, LU) [dblp]
• Mario Gerla (UCLA, US) [dblp]
• Javier Manuel Gozalvez Sempere (University Miguel Hernandez - Elche, ES)
• Marco Gruteser (Rutgers University - New Brunswick, US) [dblp]
• Jérôme Härri (EURECOM - Biot, FR) [dblp]
• Hannes Hartenstein (KIT - Karlsruher Institut für Technologie, DE) [dblp]
• Geert Heijenk (University of Twente, NL) [dblp]
• Liviu Iftode (Rutgers University - Piscataway, US) [dblp]
• Stefan Jörer (Universität Innsbruck, AT) [dblp]
• Frank Kargl (Universität Ulm, DE) [dblp]
• Renato Lo Cigno (University of Trento, IT) [dblp]
• Giovanni Pau (UCLA, US) [dblp]
• Jonathan Petit (University of Twente, NL) [dblp]
• Björn Scheuermann (HU Berlin, DE) [dblp]
• Florian Schimandl (TU München, DE) [dblp]
• Michele Segata (University of Trento, IT) [dblp]
• Christoph Sommer (Universität Innsbruck, AT) [dblp]
• Tessa Tielert (KIT - Karlsruher Institut für Technologie, DE) [dblp]
• Ozan K. Tonguz (Carnegie Mellon University - Pittsburgh, US) [dblp]
• Elisabeth Uhlemann (Halmstad University, SE) [dblp]
• Peter Vortisch (KIT - Karlsruher Institut für Technologie, DE) [dblp]