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Software 💾 ArcGIS traffic simulation add-in

Arche-Typ

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Hi everyone.
I have recently started as a research assistant on a bigger digital-twin research project at my university.
My job is to develop an ArcGIS-Addin to analyse and visualise traffic simulation data. Since I have more experience in coding than city planning, I am looking for some input from the community on what sort of tools would be most useful for city planners.

Disclaimer:
I know that ArcGIS can cost quite a bit, I would have preferred a fully open-source project too (e.g. like SUMO), but have to work within the given boundaries. At least the Add-In should be publicly available in the end.

The project in short:
The goal is to support city planning in places where only little data is available, ergo use simulations with the scope of a whole city. The roadnetwork can be changed manually inside ArcGIS, the demand is scenario based (pregenerated). The traffic simulation computation is outsourced (agent-based simulation, unfortunately also not open-source), hopefully I'll be able to integrate the whole workflow via an API all within ArcGIS at some point.

My task:
I now want to analyse and visualise the returned data. Since it's agent-based I have timestamp, location and speed of all vehicles over the span of multiple days (theoretically up to a year). I also know the underlying capacity of the road network.
Ideas I brainstormed to analyse the data on are:
  • Heatmaps for hotspots and intraday or seasonal changes (i.e. plot how much of the road capacity is used up)
  • Emission modeling (even stop and go is indirectly recorded by changing speeds between segments), emission maps/high emission zones
  • Noise pollution profile (i.e. plot the absolute speeds combined with traffic volumes)
  • Isochrone maps (how far do vehicles from a certain region/point get within a given timeframe -> identify congestion-trapped areas)
  • Origin-destination charts (where do the trajectories of a certain region flow towards -> i.e. map/visualise the demand of where people per area commute to)
  • ...?
Does anyone have any thoughts/input on what metrics/charts/maps are most useful to traffic/road/city planners? What should I focus on developing and do you have any other ideas, which I have not listed?Thank you all!
-Noah
 
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