Integrated Simulation Platform for Quantifying the Traffic-Induced Environmental and Health Impacts

TL;DR

This paper introduces an integrated simulation platform that models traffic, emissions, air quality, and human exposure at a microscopic level to evaluate environmental and health impacts of urban transportation.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel multi-module simulation platform combining traffic, emissions, dispersion, and exposure models for detailed impact assessment.

Findings

Distributed pickup reduces PM2.5-related cancer risk by 33.4%.

Platform provides quantitative insights into traffic-related air quality and health impacts.

Case study demonstrates the platform's utility for transportation system evaluation.

Abstract

Air quality and human exposure to mobile source pollutants have become major concerns in urban transportation. Existing studies mainly focus on mitigating traffic congestion and reducing carbon footprints, with limited understanding of traffic-related health impacts from the environmental justice perspective. To address this gap, we present an innovative integrated simulation platform that models traffic-related air quality and human exposure at the microscopic level. The platform consists of five modules: SUMO for traffic modeling, MOVES for emissions modeling, a 3D grid-based dispersion model, a Matlab-based concentration visualizer, and a human exposure model. Our case study on multi-modal mobility on-demand services demonstrates that a distributed pickup strategy can reduce human cancer risk associated with PM2.5 by 33.4% compared to centralized pickup. Our platform offers quantitative results of traffic-related air quality and health impacts, useful for evaluating environmental issues and improving transportation systems management and operations strategies.