The Sitraffic system platform from Siemens Mobility now also calculates traffic emissions and immissions in real-time, and integrates air quality into traffic control for the very first time. The superiority of this model-based system in comparison to purely spot measurements lies in its comprehensive coverage and consideration of the meteorological conditions. Any desired national or city-specific environment model can be integrated into the Sitraffic open platform.

Nowadays, the politicians in most towns and cities are facing traffic and environmental problems of Herculean proportions. They have to enable the existing road network to cope with ever more traffic, while at the same time ensuring that immission limits are not exceeded. Often, up to half of the fine-dust pollution in a main urban street is generated by road traffic. However, a study made by the European commission in 2006 showed that fuel consumption, and consequently also pollutant emission, could be reduced by up to fifty percent by better driving technique and the avoidance of traffic jams.

Siemens environmentally oriented traffic management calculates the emissions of oxides of nitrogen, fine dust and carbon dioxide on the basis of current traffic conditions: traffic density, vehicle speeds and the proportions of the different classes of vehicle. The calculations of the spread of pollution also incorporate real-time meteorological data and the profiles of the adjacent buildings. The current profile of urban air quality is completed by adding external pollution not resulting from traffic, such as that from local factories and power generation plants, and pollution coming in from remote sources. The open Sitraffic platform also facilitates the integration of suitable customer-specific emission and pollution spread models. The pollution data generated in real-time is taken as the basis for deciding the optimal traffic control strategy. The traffic is then controlled to the appropriate extent where and when needed. High pollution levels produced by, for example, a combination of atmospheric inversion and light winds trigger stronger measures to reduce emissions, whereas the free flow of traffic can be given top priority on days when there is no danger of limits being exceeded, and there is no need to impose traffic restrictions on account of environmental factors. In this way, Sitraffic contributes to efficient compliance with threshold values.


Further information about Siemens Mobility intelligent traffic control systems can be found under http://www.siemens.com/traffic


A photograph accompanies this press release. You can access the photo in the Internet under:
http://www.siemens.com/mobility-bilder/MO200802018