Projects financed by the Commission :: Project file
The opinions expressed in the studies are those of the consultant and do not necessarily represent the position of the Commission.
OSSA
Open framework for Simulation of transport Strategies and Assessment
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| Domain | Policy Assessment and Tools |
| Duration | from 03/2000 until 02/2003 |
| Website | http://www.cpc.wmin.ac.uk/ossa.html |
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Governments and local authorities have identified the use of traffic simulation tools as a way of enabling transport policies that can reduce pollution in cities, improve traffic safety on the roads. It will ensure that policy risks are identified and mitigated at the earliest possible opportunity.
Urban traffic control (UTC) system manufactures desperately need toolkits for modelling and simulation of urban road traffic operation for scale-up and design of new functionality and to improve the operation of existing ones. The growing traffic congestion and environmental pollution in urban road networks are driving this need even further.
UTC will help to improve the quality of the traffic controllers and improve their operability.
There currently exist at least 50 traffic simulators in Europe with varying qualities of functionalitly. Hence it would be more useful to develop an open framework which would be used to ontegrate th e best features of the existing simulators.
Most importantly, no matter how sophisticated a simulator technology is, it is of limited use to UTC designers, operators and other users without an easy-to-use graphical user interface. Virtually all the existing simulators are deficient in this respect.
This project fall within the Promoting Competitive and Sustainable Growth programme.
Recently there have been dramatic developments in both traffic simulation software technology and UTC operation in that these two areas can now be interfaced. HIPERTRANS project, that was part-funded by the 4th Framework Programme was able to develop a sophisticated and high performance traffic simulator and integratedit with real-live UtC system. Many more UTC companies and local authorities offered by integration of simulators with live UTC systems.
The OSSA project addresses the need to produce a user-friendly and meaningful traffic simulator to end-users. It aims to achive this by means of advanced visualisation capabilities and analysis tools for the simulated results in order to access the effects of transport policy scenarios on urban traffic. It also simulates the effects of urban traffic on the enavironment.
The objective of OSSA will be develop a standard OPEN simulation framework that will provide interconnectivity with other simulators and systems: UTC systems, dynamic O/D matrix, co-simulators (emissions), data sources: GIS, UTC data, etc. The Framework will also permitt the modelling of equipment present on the road at intersection leve.
The project will start by studying existing simulation tools and identifying their differnet modules: simulation engines, simulation engines, simulation models, data entry, demand models, visualisers, enalysers, etc. In parallel a comprehensive study of the user requirements concerning simulation, visualisation and analysis capabilities will be conducted. UTC system capabilities as well as policy objectives will also be studied in this context with a view to extablishing a reliable decision making structure. With the result of both studies the project will produce technical specifications for the necessary developments. It will also study traffic models, environmental models, and policy models, and policy models and then translate these into technical formulae and scenarios. These specifications will then be implemented and integrated into the 1 st OSSA Prototype. The fully integrated system will be finally demostrated in a high profile way before users anda general pubblic. The final product will be exploited by the consortium partners.
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