SIMTRAP - SIMULATION OF TRAFFIC-INDUCED AIR-POLLUTION

In recent years, a growing traffic demand combined with an increase in exhaust gas emissions is the main reason for a permanent decrease in air quality in urban areas. Especially during hot summer days, traffic emissions are mainly responsible for providing precursor substances f or the ozone formation. Overall, they account for approximately 70% of an emissions In order to facilitate investigations analyzing this sit uation, local authorities in environmental protection and urban planni ng agencies are interested in performing emissions and air pollution s imulation as well as scenario analysis by means of model-based simulat ion systems. Therefore, a realistic modeling of the physical behavior of the atmosphere, as well as the exact description of the emissions, is necessary Up to now, it is mainly traffic counts, combined with dif ferent statistical methods, that have beets used to calculate these em issions. The results obtained are often incorrect and do not reflect t he dynamic behavior of the traffic flow. Traffic flow model's provide a more promising approach. Currently, in the European Community-funded SIMTRAP project an integrated system of traffic flow information, air pollution modeling and decision support will be developed in a distri buted high-performance computing network (HPCN) and subsequently teste d at a number of European sites. SIMTRAP centers an two well-establish ed core components: the air pollution model DYMOS and the mesoscopic d ynamic traffic simulation tool DYNEMO. The project aims to integrate b oth modules in a remote HPCN environment in order to enable the detail ed simulation of an area of sufficient geographical extent. Interpreta tion and visualization of results will take place in a local 3D geogra phical information system (GIS), whereas communication will be realize d using existing computer networks and protocols.