Concerto aims to reduce vehicle emissions

Led by the Centre for Transport Studies at Imperial College London and involving a range of industrial partners, Concerto – which stands for Co-operative Networked Concept for Emission Responsive Traffic Operations – is a three-year research programme that aims to use the sophisticated test environment of the innovITS Advance city circuit to develop next-generation technologies that reduce motor vehicle emissions.
May 17, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
RSSLed by the Centre for Transport Studies at 500 Imperial College London and involving a range of industrial partners, Concerto – which stands for Co-operative Networked Concept for Emission Responsive Traffic Operations – is a three-year research programme that aims to use the sophisticated test environment of the 67 innovITS Advance city circuit to develop next-generation technologies that reduce motor vehicle emissions.

The Concerto programme began in the autumn of 2010 and aims to build upon previous research programmes carried out by Imperial College London, drawing together, and combining the technologies that each of them has delivered. This previous work includes the development of Vehicle Performance and Emissions Monitoring System (VPEMS) technology and both local and grid based roadside emissions monitoring systems as developed in the Mobile Environmental Sensor System Across GRID Environments (MESSAGE) project. By linking these with local weather information and precise real-time location details for each vehicle, as well as using data available from the Engine Control Unit (ECU), a wide range of potential future innovations may be possible, enabling urban traffic to behave in a co-operative and actively managed manner in order to reduce emissions and hence improve local air quality.

“We were particularly keen to use the innovITS Advance city circuit for the initial testing programme of Concerto,” said Dr Robin North, Lecturer in the Centre for Transport Studies at Imperial College London. “This facility provides us with exactly the type of highly controllable, repeatable and measurable environment that we need for this form of research.”

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Managed motorways, hard shoulder running aids safety, saves time
    January 30, 2012
    The announcement that, in 2012/13, work to extend Managed Motorways to Junctions 5-8 of the M6 near Birmingham in the West Midlands is scheduled to start marks the next step for the UK's hard shoulder running concept, first introduced on the M42 in 2006. The M6 scheme is in fact one of several announced; over the next few years work will start on applying Managed Motorways to various sections of the M1, M25 London Orbital, M60 and M62. According to Paul Unwin, senior project manager with the Highways Agency
    Read More
  • Smartphone solution for parking performance
    March 31, 2017
    Automated parking offers optimised space utilisation and fewer damage complaints as David Crawford discovers. As cars become smarter, technology designed to make parking them more straightforward is developing in parallel. In turn, it is becoming clear that the places where vehicles spend much of their time will need to respond – more comprehensively than by supporting established aids such as smartphone-based parking location and reservation, or payment for time used.
    Read More
  • Smartphone solution for parking performance
    March 31, 2017
    Automated parking offers optimised space utilisation and fewer damage complaints as David Crawford discovers. As cars become smarter, technology designed to make parking them more straightforward is developing in parallel. In turn, it is becoming clear that the places where vehicles spend much of their time will need to respond – more comprehensively than by supporting established aids such as smartphone-based parking location and reservation, or payment for time used.
    Read More
  • Clean vehicle retrofit scheme provides key component of UK government AQ plan
    August 4, 2017
    Developed jointly by the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership (LowCVP) and the Energy Saving Trust (EST) together with industry stakeholders through funding and support from the DEFRA/DfT Joint Air Quality Unit (JAQU), the just-launched Clean Vehicle Retrofit Accreditation Scheme (CVRAS) aims to provide the provide the backbone of future retrofit funding for vehicle emission control systems. By providing a single standard for any emission technology to be validated to meet the standards set out in the government’
    Read More

Highlighted Content