Abstract
In the past, most vehicle energy consumption models on the planning level have not accounted for the impact of road elevation. Generally this has been supported by idea that it will all “even out,” or be reflected by changes in speed or acceleration, but an aggregate network demonstration on a realistic sized city has been difficult to show. This work explores the impact of road elevation using a dynamic traffic assignment model to simulate vehicle movement and calculate energy consumption, including the effect of road elevation. Results on two city networks show the differences between evaluations that include road elevation versus those that do not. Additionally, this talk covers “eco-routing”, in which drivers choose the least energy consumed shortest path, and the effects of road elevation. Again, results show the importance of considering gradient: if drivers do not account for elevation changes, they may choose a route that actually increases vehicle energy consumption.
About the Speaker
Melissa Duell is a PhD student at the University of New South Wales and a National ICT Australia (NICTA) Graduate Researcher. She has undergrad degrees in civil engineering and a humanities honors program from the University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests include transport planning models, particularly in sustainability-related applications, and baking sugar-free desserts that are as good as their counterparts, among many other topics. She’s on a three month research visit to UCL, kindly hosted by Ben Heydecker.