IRTX MATSim to Noise connector

Introduction

This model is a connector between the upstream MATSim model and the downstream Noise analysis model.

The purpose of this connector is to process a given MATSim simulation output, and aggregate the population to receiver points and prepare data on the flow volumes in the road network to be used by the Noise model.

Requirements

Software requirements

To run the model, the environment needs to be prepared:

• A Java runtime needs to be present on the executing machine. It is recommended to set up an Adoptium OpenJDK 11 (https://adoptium.net).

• A recent version of maven needs to be installed, version 3.6.3 has been tested: https://maven.apache.org/

It is recommended to set up the environment on a Linux machine, the following executables should then be callable from the command line: java, mvn.

Input / Output

Input

To run the model, a finished MATSim simulation must be available. Specifically, the MATSim output directory should contain a file called output_plans.xml.gz describing the experienced movements and activities of the population, as well as output_network.xml.gz describing the road network.

Output

The output of the model are two CSV files (receivers.csv and volumes.csv) which correspond to the two input files for the Noise model. In the respective documentation they are also called static and dynamic input, respectively.

Note that as of 2 November 2022 the format of the CSV files differs in the Noise model documentation and the its examples. The present connector provides the option to select one of the two formats. They differ in the column names of the CSV files, but should not affect the functioning of the Noise model as it accesses the columns by index.

Configuration

The conversion process needs to be configured using a configuration file (configuration.json) in JSON format. It is structured as follows:

{
  "output_format": "examples",
  "mode_mapping": {
    "car": {
      "noise_category": 4,
      "sampling_rate": 0.05
    },
    "freight:van": {
      "noise_category": 1,
      "sampling_rate": 1.0
    }
  }
}

First, the output format can be defined which is either examples or documentation depending on which column headers should be written based on the information of the Noise model. After, a list of mode mappings is provided that links transport modes from the MATSim simulation to the four analysis categories of the Noise model. Note that JSprit vehicle types (when used as input to the MATSim simulation) are translated into freight:{vehicle_type} while the other relevant contribution to emissions is the standard car mode.

Attention, only modes that are defined in the configuration are considered in the analysis.

Additionally, it is possible to define the sampling rate per mode which should correspond to the sampling rate of the MATSim simulation. The relevant KPIs like distance and vehicle count is scaled accordingly by the inverse of the sampling rate.

Building the model

The connector model is provided as Java code. To run it, it first needs to be built using the Maven build system. For that purpose, one needs to enter the java directory of the LEAD repository and call mvn package:

cd /irtx-matsim-noise-connector/java
mvn package

The build process should download all necessary Maven dependencies including the MATSim and finish without errors. After, the built model should be present in

/irtx-matsim-noise-connector/java/target/lead-matsim-1.0.0.jar

The jar file can be saved in a fixed location. As long as the model is not changed, it can be reused for multiple model runs. To test whether the jar has been build successfully, call

java -cp /irtx-matsim-noise-connector/java/target/lead-matsim-noise-connector-1.0.0.jar fr.irtx.lead.matsim_noise_connector.RunVerification

which should respond by the message It works!.

Running the model

To run the connector, the respective jar needs to be built first. It can then be started in the following way:

java -Xmx12g -cp /irtx-matsim-noise-connector/java/target/lead-matsim-noise-connector-1.0.0.jar fr.irtx.lead.matsim_noise_connector.RunNoiseConverter \
  --configuration-path /path/to/configuration.json \
  --network-path /path/to/output_network.xml.gz \
  --plans-path /path/to/output_plans.xml.gz \
  --receivers-path /path/to/receivers.csv \
  --volumes-path /path/to/volumes.csv

The first line is mandatory with the path to the built jar file that needs to be adapted. The following lines represent parameters. The mandatory parameters are detailed in the following table:

Parameter	Values	Description
--configuration-path	String	Path to the configuration file
--network-path	String	Path to the MATSim output output_network.xml.gz
--plans-path	String	Path to the MATSim output output_plans.xml.gz
--receivers-path	String	Path to where the receiver results will be saved
--volumes-path	String	Path to where the volumes results will be saved

Note that the memory available to Java can be configured using the -Xmx option and by appending a size of the format 1024M to define the amount in megabytes or 12G to define the amount in gigabytes.

Standard scenarios

For the Lyon living lab, a configuration file has already been prepared in data/configuration_lyon.json. It can be used to prepare Noise data for the three main scenarios (Baseline 2022, UCC 2022, UCC 2030) as follows:

java -Xmx12g -cp /irtx-matsim-noise-connector/java/target/lead-matsim-noise-connector-1.0.0.jar fr.irtx.lead.matsim_noise_connector.RunNoiseConverter \
  --configuration-path data/configuration_lyon.json \
  --network-path /irtx-matsim/output/output_{scenario}/output_network.xml.gz \
  --plans-path /irtx-matsim/output/output_{scenario}/output_plans.xml.gz \
  --receivers-path /irtx-matsim-noise-connector/output/receivers_{scenario}.csv \
  --volumes-path /irtx-matsim-noise-connector/output/volumes_{scenario}.csv

Here, {scenario} = baseline_2022 | ucc_2022 | ucc_2030 according to the respective scenario.