CiTi
CiTi – Center for integrative Traffic investigation
Duration: 2015 - 2018
Funding: Strategy Fund of RWTH Aachen University
Project partner:
- Institute for Automotive Engineering
- Institute of Automatic Control
- Chair of Computer Science 11 – Embedded Software
- Chair and Institute of Urban and Transportation Planning
Background
By establishing the Profile Area Mobility & Transport Engineering (MTE), RWTH Aachen University hopes make a significant scientific contribution to the development, design, and research of sustainable mobility. The initial basis for this is the existing and emerging infrastructure at RWTH Aachen University, e.g. the driving simulator at the Institute for Automotive Engineering and the Center for Research on European Mobility (CERM) set up at the Aldenhoven Testing Center (ATC).
In order to research the potential of connected technologies holistically, the competencies of the different institutes involved in traffic simulation must be promoted and connected further. Only in this way can the interdisciplinary, cross-faculty research result in credible statements on the traffic effects of innovative technologies. The development of sustainable mobility faces four core challenges which are also key research areas for future mobility: increasing traffic safety, transport efficiency, energy efficiency, and urban quality of life.
Aims of the project
Project CiTi aims to create the technological data and simulation requirements to predict the effectiveness of innovative measures and technologies, especially regarding research on connected mobility at RWTH Aachen University. This supports the long-term goal of the Profile Area, which is to establish a Cluster for Mobility Research at RWTH Aachen University as a special institute lateral to the faculties to systematically promote the profiling of the university and to advance internationally visible and relevant mobility research.
In the course of the project, the level of total traffic will be opened up for future research using connected and automated systems in order to assess primarily their impact on transport efficiency and traffic flow, but also on traffic safety in cooperation with CERM.
Project contents and structure
The “Center for integrative Traffic investigation” (CiTi) seeks to establish the following three components at RWTH Aachen University to enable future research using complex transport systems:
- Setting up a traffic data centre
- Multiscale modelling
- Extrapolation to entire transport networks
The first step of the project is to set up a traffic database. This step not only includes the concept and the implementation of the traffic database and the traffic data server, but also the connection to the existing wireless sensor networks of cities/regions/states, the analysis of the available data, and the abstraction of the data into a generic traffic description.
The second component comprises the creation of a suitable traffic simulation environment including the transformation and integration of the data from the traffic data centre as a prerequisite of the analysis and assessment of innovative technologies such as connected transport management strategies.
In the third step, the impact of new connected technologies and measures on entire traffic areas for which there is only macroscopic data available will be assessed in a simulation. For example, CERM findings on the impact of specific traffic scenarios can be extrapolated to entire traffic areas.
