Decision support system monitoring and modelling platform to inform policy and management strategies to reduce environmental impacts of traffic

Local Authorities, National and European Governments are under pressure to meet air quality and carbon emissions targets. Appropriate ways to monitor and model environmental impacts of traffic in networks are becoming increasingly important. Traffic related emissions create pollution “hot spots” which are governed by the built environment (canyons, street orientation, gradient etc.) as well as the prevailing meteorological conditions. There is a need to provide traffic operators with a tool kit to allow traffic interventions that are designed to manage air quality not just delay and stops. This paper presents an over view of the systems architecture developed by Newcastle University to deliver the next generation of environmental assessment and management of traffic. Details of the on-line component, namely the Newcastle University Integrated Database and Assessment Platform, NUIDAP, in an UTMC environment are elaborated. This is followed by examples of three NUIDAP components, namely the real-time data/status processing, historic analysis and canyon concentration estimator, which have been analysed by the Newcastle Team, using the software platform which has integrated different legacy system data sources.