Open Access

ARTICLE

Precise Evaluation of Vehicles Emission in Urban Traffic Using Multi-agent-based Traffic Simulator MATES

by

1 The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences 2012, 88(1), 49-64. https://doi.org/10.3970/cmes.2012.088.049

Abstract

Recently, global warming issues have been discussed all over the world. Of the total amount of CO₂ emitted in Japan, a transportation sector is responsible for 20%. In the transportation sector, 90% of the emission is due to road traffic. This amount must be reduced drastically to realize a low-carbon society. To do so, various measures have been discussed, and the effects of the measures must be estimated quantitatively. In conventional measurement methods, the amount of vehicle emission is simply calculated by multiplying travel distance or gasoline consumption by a specified emission coefficient. Such an approach neglects the effects of the interactions among many vehicles. In this study, we estimate the amount of CO₂ vehicles emission by using a microscopic traffic simulator integrated with a precise database of exhaust gases emitted from various types of cars. The interactions among various types of cars are precisely considered through traffic simulation using a microscopic traffic simulator based on the intelligent multi-agent approach. By matching the input data of the database with the output information of the traffic simulator, the amount of momentary emission from each car can be estimated. The total amount of vehicles emission in a particular region or the emission history of a particular car is calculated from the momentary emission. Through some simulations, we clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed system, compared with a conventional estimation method. Especially, it was found that the conventional method underestimates CO₂ emission by 20-30 percents in traffic congestion situations.

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