The transport modelling firm Aimsun, has won a prestigious UK transport award for their predictive modelling solution to reduce traffic’s environmental impact.
The Aimsun-led NEVFMA project won the Innovative Use of Technology Award from ITS (UK) for its solution, recently trialled in Oxfordshire, which fuses real-time modelling with air quality sensors to reduce emissions in areas suffering from significant effects of pollution.
NEVFMA, which stands for Network Emissions and Vehicle Flow Management Adjustment, uses modelling techniques to predict congestion build-up before it happens and use ITS solutions such as changes to signal timings or VMS to mitigate against traffic jams before they happen. It uses air quality sensors to identify areas with high pollution and therefore move any traffic that does build up to areas where their emissions will do much less harm.
The judges were impressed by data which showed targeted interventions deliver an average decrease in emissions of 5%, with decreases of up to 40% on some days. On 57% of the days evaluated, when emissions would have exceeded the annual legal NO2 average, the NEVFMA system recommended a traffic management strategy which brought emissions back below legal limits two thirds of the time.
“NEVFMA is proof that cities can significantly reduce traffic-related emissions without having to invest in new physical infrastructure or impose travel restrictions,” commented Mark Brackstone of Aimsun. “We hope this award helps raise awareness among other transport authorities that it’s possible to repurpose existing ITS equipment and data for more sustainable mobility.”
NEVFMA was delivered by Aimsun, working with EarthSense, Yunex Traffic and Oxfordshire County Council for National Highways.
(Picture – Aimsun)
