US-Bangladesh Cooperative Research: Modeling Motorized and Non-Motorized Vehicular Traffic Flow to Estimate Vehicular Emissions and their Impacts

University Of Colorado At Denver-Downtown Campus, Denver CO

Investigators

Abstract

0220558 Khan Description: This award is to support a joint research project by Dr. Sarosh I. Khan, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Colorado, Denver, Colorado; Dr.Jobair Bin Alam, Civil Engineering Department, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka, Bangladesh; and Dr. Lars Persson, Centre for Health and Population Research (ICDDR,B), Dhaka, Bangladesh. The investigators will develop a traffic flow model to represent the interaction between motorized and nonmotorized vehicles. The model will provide microscopic and macroscopic measures of traffic flow, and generate emission estimates for transportation networks. The broader goal of this grant is to estimate the impact of traffic flow on pollutant concentrations near roadways, and how those pollutants affect the children in Dhaka. The researchers will use an integrated model development approach based on field data. Dr. Khan will develop a traffic interaction model for two-and three-wheeled motorized and nonmotorized vehicles that travel in the same right-of-way, but which is not lane-based due to significant lateral movement primarily by smaller sized vehicles. The information from the model will then be incorporated into a dispersion model to be developed by Dr. Alam to estimate air pollutant concentrations. Dr. Persson and other ICDDR,B epidemiologists will examine the impact on children exposed to vehicular emmisions. Scope: Dhaka, Bangladesh, experiences air pollution that is more severe than in many larger cities, and the degraded air quality can have a significant negative impact on children. In part this pollution is caused by emissions from the increased number of motorized vehicles on Dhaka's roads. The current models for predicting emission impacts were created for the lane-based, homogeneous traffic found in developing countries. These models are much less reliable when used in developing countries, where the vehicles are heterogeneous, and driver behavior patterns and traffic regulation and enforcement are different. This research initiates a new partnership with international counterparts to develop and test integrated models for a problem that plagues several megacities in developing countries.