It can analyse real-time traffic data from video recordings. All it needs to perform this is footage from a drone or security or other cameras. The Brno-based company RCE Systems has made a global breakthrough with its DataFromSky technology. Now the company intends to take it to a new level and include a function for monitoring traffic emissions. To achieve this, the company has invited experts from the Brno University of Technology to participate in its development.
Traffic jams, traffic lights, constant braking and starting. This is what a typical morning of a driver in a big city looks like. It exerts not just pressure on the nerves of those behind the wheel, but also on the air. Scientists from the Brno University of Technology are now working on a method enabling the determination of emission levels in real-time as easily as possible with the help of RCE Systems. "In traffic management, the so-called emission factor is used, i.e. how much pollution is produced by the traffic flow in grams per kilometre. The problem is when we want to apply these emission factors to urban transport. This is because the factors are calculated under steady conditions, not including dynamic phenomena such as constant braking and starting, where the situation is fundamentally different in terms of emissions. We are now trying to model the emission levels generated by cars that move in the city in a certain specific way," says researcher Jakub Linda from the Energy Institute of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Brno University of Technology.
The way cars move within the city can be determined with the help of the aforementioned DataFromSky software. Based on this software, the researchers are now building a new function to measure emissions. The aim is to develop a system for indirect real-time identification of the production of exhaust and non-exhaust emissions from traffic. It will be based on a combination of detailed traffic data, terrain morphology and advanced emission models. Computer vision and artificial intelligence will help with the analysis of traffic flow, and this traffic data will then form one of the inputs to more accurate models for real emissions of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter, relevant to individual passing cars.
"We don't have an existing model for particulate matter emissions yet, so there is a lot of research ahead of us in this field. So far, we have been using expert articles and studies from all over the world and trying to combine different approaches. The result is to be our own model and also an emission factor, which, however, instead of grams per kilometre, will use the unit of grams per second for one car, which tells us more about the traffic in the city," explains Klaudia Köbölová of the Department of Energy Engineering.
While experts from the Energy Institute focus on particulate emissions, Michael Böhm from the Institute of Automotive Engineering deals with gaseous emissions. "Based on the requirements of RCE systems and our research of the vehicle fleet in the Czech Republic, we have created models of typical vehicles to be used with the software we use for their simulations – for example, a typical representative of a passenger car with a petrol engine, a diesel engine, a bus and others. The accuracy of our predictions is higher than that of current emissions assessments, which are typically based on average tabular values of the average vehicle. Our prediction, which was made using simulation models for a specific vehicle and a specific driving style, detected by cameras is significantly more accurate compared to table averages," says Böhm. "Each car is specific in its way, you simply cannot use one general model. So we introduce other variables into our model, such as the age of the vehicle, real conditions, and so on," Böhm comments on the development work.
Out of the faculties of the Brno University of Technology, the Faculty of Chemistry was also involved in the research. "Professor Vladimír Adamec has long-term experience with emissions and particles, and especially about their behaviour and impact on human health," adds Köbölová. The activities of the BUT research team are coordinated by the director of the Energy Institute, Jiří Pospíšil, who offered a lot of space for the creative approach of young researchers from the ranks of doctoral students.
The output of the project will be an easy-to-apply solution that will use common city surveillance cameras for immediate and continuous evaluation of the emission load in individual transport hubs. Thanks to the fact that the system will use the existing infrastructure, it will be significantly cheaper compared to automatic air quality measurement stations. Based on the data, the city could then fine-tune traffic to reduce the emission burden in built-up areas. "For example, if we find that there are very high emissions at a certain intersection, the traffic lights can be adjusted to make traffic flow smoother. And thanks to the cameras, it will be possible to promptly evaluate the impact the measure has," says Linda.
The research, funded by the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic, has completed its first year. The experts would like to arrive at the finished product with RCE systems in another two years. The project was nominated for Intertraffic User Experience Award 2024 at the fair in Amsterdam, which takes place in mid-April.