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Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) aim to assist commuters in taking informed decisions concerning travel safety and efficiency. Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANET) are one of the key platforms for ITS, wherein vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication - collectively designated as V2X - can sup- port information dissemination. With high-fidelity sensors becoming mainstream in modern vehicles, VANETs are expected to adequately support the diffusion of disparate sensory artifacts, including the prevailing traffic conditions. In turn, V2X-based Traffic Information Systems (TIS) will provide drivers with dynamic route planning and congestion estimates. Nevertheless, the intrinsic properties of mobility, the lack of clear understanding of vehicular network connectivity, as well as the stringent time and quality constraints for traffic data diffusion, impose significant barriers in the process of designing, implementing and deploying TIS. Moreover, the research community has yet to adopt thorough and realistic performance evaluations approaches for such systems and their peripheral components thereby introducing unnecessary risks of failure, simply because they will confront a demanding environment they were not designed for. This thesis presents the research efforts towards providing solutions to the aforementioned problems. To investigate the potentials and understand how distributed VANET-based TIS will eventually be realized, we study through extensive analytical and simulative methods the following problem domains: (i) VANET dynamics in Urban Environments, (ii) Traffic Sensing and Acquisition, and (iii) Large- Scale …