Less than 10 minutes to generate an air quality impact scenario based on the vehicles running at regional level and in each municipality.
This is, after months of brisk work, a first result of the Proof of Concept (POC) of VERA, the Regional Digital Twin.
The POC, in further refinement, measures the air quality impacts of the Emilia-Romagna region with reference to regional traffic and road policies.
This tool, available in this first phase for regional governance and domain experts, allows the generation of scenarios having as input three distinct modes:
- modification of traffic data on the regional road graph, where it is possible to act directly on linear traffic by changing the flows of vehicles on the regional road network;
- definition of a policy at municipal level, whereby it is possible to change the roster of vehicles in circulation for one or more municipalities;
- application of emission reductions, through which it is possible to simulate the reduction of traffic emissions for one or more municipalities.
The scenarios generation gives the absolute and relative concentrations and emissions of air quality variables (such as NO2, PM10 and PM2.5).
The calculation of emissions is carried out according to the INEMAR methodology, whilst the concentration department uses the calculation methodology derived from the SHERPA project of the JRC, and the source/receptor functions have been trained by ARPAE for the definition of the PAIR 2030 scenarios.
