The CONNECTING project team combines various modelling techniques (agent-based modelling, life cycle assessment) to model the near-future mobility systems of Luxembourg, and to assess the environmental impacts of cross-border commuting between France and Luxembourg.
What goals for what research problems?
The main goal of CONNECTING is to develop a combined ABM/consequential LCA modelling framework to assess the environmental consequences of policies aiming at decreasing the use of conventional vehicles by cross-border commuters in favour of more diversified mobility: electric vehicles, multimodal mobility, public transport and soft mobility.
A novel combination
Through agent-based modelling, simulating the behaviour of each cross-border commuter, i.e. determining their modal choice for commuting to work every day, offers a high definition picture of passenger transportation habits. Simultaneously, life cycle modelling of vehicles (private cars, buses, trains, and tram) also gives a detailed representation of various transportation modes and their environmental impacts. Life cycle assessment is especially employed to analyse a various set of environmental impacts: greenhouse gas emissions, particulate matter emissions, toxicity, or land use, among others.
Combining these two models is an opportunity to analyse future mobility in a bottom-up way, in order to produce a large-scale picture (the commuting of a whole population over 10 years) while keeping a high level of detail in terms of environmental consequences.