PhD Hosseinzadeh Bahreini Samaneh

Within the LEMA research team, Professor Sigrid Reiter coordinates and scientifically supervises this thesis and Samaneh Hosseinzadeh Bahreini is working on a doctoral thesis on this project.

Development of an integrated transport and air pollution model, for a sustainable and healthy mobility

In order to achieve sustainable goals for transport related air pollution, transport policies should develop innovations in emission control technologies related to vehicles and fuels and, at the same time, promote modal shift and improved travel behaviors. The ability to compare several simulations of various mobility policies in the same test zone, without having to implement them in the real world, gives the opportunity to examine range of possibilities and to choose the best strategies.

This doctoral project aims to develop a framework (including data collection) for an integrated traffic and air emissions simulation model, to evaluate targeted urban policy interventions and their forecast effects on human health, climate change and ecosystems, by 2030 and 2050. The validation of the developed approach through its application on a test-zone is necessary and useful. Therefore, developing the combined model and applying it to the urban area of Liege will be done in this project.

A first innovation of the project is linked to the combination of a large-scale traffic simulation model, a detailed emission estimator model and a GIS (geographic information system) to improve the evaluation and localization of urban air quality policy interventions in urban areas in Belgium. The design and application of this integrated model will help various stakeholders (policy makers, designers and transport engineers) to predict better the concentration of air pollution in urban areas and, as a result, this tool should help with the optimization of mobility policies and sustainable strategies.

Another innovative aspect is the forecast modeling by 2030 and 2050 of various mobility policies combined with their environmental and health impacts assessment. The integrated modeling is based on five fields of research: mobility modeling, polluting emissions modeling, environmental and health impacts assessment, forecast modeling and transport policies optimization. The integrated approach in this project will be used to investigate effects of potential changes in mobility behaviors, innovative vehicle technologies or smart city technologies on traffic demand and on local air quality in 2030 and 2050, with the assessment of their quantitative impacts on human health, climate change and ecosystems. The integrated modeling will give the opportunity to evaluate a variety of potential transport policies. It also will provide a basis for future research studies on the modeling of travel demand and their environmental effects, and on the application of this approach to other countries.