Digital mobility modelling experts Aimsun have released the latest version of Aimsun Next modelling software focussing on multi-modal travel.
The company says Aimsun Next 22 builds on its ongoing commitment to transportation network analysis and optimisation. New features enhance sustainable, efficient mobility with a special focus on enabling large-scale, multi-modal models for cities, highways, and regions. The modelling capabilities also cover new technologies such as electric vehicles, along with enhancements for simulating pedestrians, cyclists, and users of public transportation.
“Cities all around the world are striving to become more liveable,” says Paolo Rinelli, Global Head of Product Management at Aimsun. “When the pandemic radically reduced our mobility, it gave everyone a taste of how urban public space might be better used for living rather than driving and parking private vehicles. Aimsun Next 22 is the ideal platform for studying the impact of projects aimed at sustainable mobility, from promoting the use of public transport to creating bike lanes or encouraging electric motors over combustion engines.”
The previous version of Aimsun Next responded swiftly to the changes and challenges of a post-pandemic world and Aimsun Next 22 sharpens this focus with enhancements to pedestrian behavior, non-lane-based vehicle modeling, and more sensitive handling of electric vehicles and environmental models.
With its new Battery Consumption Model, Aimsun Next 22 shows the performance of electric vehicles’ energy consumption. Aimsun has also streamlined its models for vehicle engine types and sustainability awareness to work smoothly together across its five environmental models, which now include the emissions models: QUARTET, Panis et al., and the London Emission Model (LEM) plus two energy-related models: the Fuel Consumption Model and the Battery Consumption Model.
As a result of climate concerns and pandemic-related factors, transit systems and non-motorised vehicles are playing a more crucial role across the globe. In response to this, Aimsun has introduced new flexible traffic management strategies for transit-route detours, and we continue to fine-tune our models for bikes and non-motorised vehicles with new, reactive, keep to the left or keep to the right instructions, for more realistic behaviour.
“As traffic modelling gets more demanding and ambitious, so Aimsun Next 22 strives to absorb new challenges and requirements with improvements to large-scale modelling tasks,” the company adds. “You will find it easier and more rewarding to work with traffic demand, transit assignments, splitting and joining zones, creating more accurate ‘warm-up’ traffic states, and fine-tuning and presenting a wider range of customisable analytical outputs.”
“Modeling at an appropriate scale, from a single junction to a regional road network, has always been at the heart of what Aimsun Next is able to do with integrated macro, meso, and micro models,” explains Paolo Rinelli. “The design of the latest version of Aimsun Next is just a part of the same philosophy: with its inherent flexibility, it has smoothly adapted to the need for cohesive, environmentally-conscious planning and operations at any scale.”
(Picture and animation, Aimsun)
