VISUM goes environmental

To avoid traffic-related pollution, it is important to know the source and amount of pollutants emitted. PTV has developed a new method, which it has integrated into its VISUM transportation planning tool, that calculates all relevant pollutants and therefore enables traffic planners to address environmental issues while using traffic planning tools.
February 2, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
To avoid traffic-related pollution, it is important to know the source and amount of pollutants emitted. 3264 PTV has developed a new method, which it has integrated into its VISUM transportation planning tool, that calculates all relevant pollutants and therefore enables traffic planners to address environmental issues while using traffic planning tools.

Thomas Haupt, member of the Board of Directors of PTV, therefore emphasises: "The EU-Directive on emission levels urgently requires traffic-related measures in order to conform to the limit values, in particular those for NO2 levels. The new module now provides planning security and an officially recognised method for the calculation of pollutants."

Over ten years ago the environmental agencies of Germany, Switzerland and Austria pooled their resources to compile a comprehensive database of emission factors. Recently the handbook of emission factors (HBEFA) underwent a major revision. The emission factors were updated to take into account new engine concepts and emission standards, and the traffic situations for which emission factors are published were re-structured more systematically. Moreover Sweden, Norway and France joined the consortium, so that the revised HBEFA is on its way to becoming a truly European standard. With those recent developments, HBEFA perfectly complements VISUM for emission modelling.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Do we need a new approach to ITS and traffic management?
    January 31, 2012
    In an article which has implications for the European Electronic Toll Service, ASECAP's Kallistratos Dionelis asks whether the approach we currently take to major ITS system implementations is always the best or healthiest. I was asked recently to write a paper on the technology-oriented future of transport. To paraphrase, I started with: "The goal of European policy-makers is to establish a transport system which meets society's economic, social and environmental needs, satisfying in parallel a rising dema
    Read More
  • What actually happens if we do #FreetheMIBs?
    May 1, 2020
    Q-Free’s #FREEtheMIBs campaign highlights the use of manufacturer-specific data output, storage and communication protocols in traffic lights and ITS systems.
    Read More
  • Loop detection still has a part in traffic management
    March 2, 2012
    Bob Lees, co-founder of Diamond Consulting Services, on why the loop detector just refuses to go away. The more strident proponents of newer and emergent detection technologies are quick to highlight what they see as the disadvantages, and hence the imminent passing, of the humble inductive loop. The more prosaic will acknowledge that loops continue to have a part to play in traffic management, falling back on the assertion that it is all a question of application. And yet year after year the loop, despite
    Read More
  • Statistical improvement for short-term travel time predictions
    June 2, 2014
    Researchers at Imperial College in London have developed a generic three-stage short-term travel prediction model that promises to give greater accuracy under both normal and abnormal conditions. As travellers do not like the randomness of non-recurrent traffic congestion and delays, it is particularly useful for network managers to know how the ongoing traffic situation will develop when an atypical event occurs.
    Read More

Highlighted Content