Integrated Simulation Platform for Quantifying the Traffic-Induced Environmental and Health Impacts

Urban air quality and the impact of mobile source pollutants on human health are of increasing concern in transportation studies. Existing research often focuses on reducing traffic congestion and carbon footprints, but there's a notable gap in understanding the health impacts of traffic from an environmentally-just perspective. Addressing this, our paper introduces an integrated simulation platform that models not only traffic-related air quality but also the direct health implications at a microscopic level. This platform integrates five modules: SUMO for traffic modeling, MOVES for emissions modeling, a 3D grid-based dispersion model, a Matlab-based visualizer for pollutant concentrations, and a human exposure model. We emphasize the transportation-health pathway, examining how different mobility strategies impact human health. Our case study on multimodal on-demand services demonstrates that a distributed pickup strategy can reduce cancer risk from PM
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exposure by 33.4% compared to centralized pickup. This platform offers insights into traffic-related air quality and health impacts, providing valuable data for improving transportation systems and strategies with a focus on health outcomes.