Adaptive traffic management for sustainability
- €3.1 m EU-funded project that has made its way to China through knowledge transfer
- CO2 and Black Carbon are the first and second major causes for global warming, BC also causes acute health effects
- In the EU, 28% of CO2 is from transport, BC exposure is highly related to transport
The aim of the CARBOTRAF project was to support traffic operators in real time to adopt optimal intelligent transport control strategies to mitigate traffic congestion while reducing CO2 and Black Carbon emissions. The project team included 2 academic and 5 industrial partners, and 2 cities (Glasgow, Graz) as test sites.
The system developed includes off-line and online modules. The off-line module generates a library of traffic and emission simulation results in relation to a variety of traffic control strategies, including coordinated signal control and variable message sign, for different traffic network scenarios. The on-line module combines a real-time monitoring of traffic and air pollution with a decision support system, which recommends the best control strategy to the operator through innovative optimization techniques and machine learning.
Simulation and field implementation of the CARBOTRAF system have shown very promising results. The project was showcased in the International Big Data Expo in May 2017, and won the Excellence Award in the China Intelligent Transport and Big Data Application Innovation Contest in Sep 2017.