Improving air quality maps through traffic counts
The city of Antwerp is working with the Flanders Environment Agency to improve the air quality maps on which the city bases its air quality policy.
Air quality maps are based in part on traffic models. The reliability of these models is currently variable because the city does not yet have fine-meshed traffic counts on local roads. Hence why the city of Antwerp is focusing on traffic counts, which should provide insight into the contribution of traffic to the local concentrations of various pollutants.
Measurement points
To improve the air quality maps, the city is conducting targeted measurements at locations where heavy truck traffic is expected, and where the reliability of the underlying traffic model is rather low. In addition, traffic is also counted at the level of several existing air quality monitoring points in the city.
Smart traffic counters
Traffic counts are done with Telraam devices. The city purchased about seventy of these smart traffic counters, which continuously count the number of pedestrians, cyclists, cars and trucks and register their speed at various locations in Antwerp. Some devices were installed on lighting poles in the public domain, while others were placed in schools or other public buildings.
Telraam cameras record traffic, while the built-in microcomputer analyzes the images and immediately processes them into usable data that is sent in real-time to the Telraam-data portal. No camera images are stored or transmitted. Telraam devices also do not record personal data or license plates.
