Integrated Transport Effects Modelling System

ITEMS has been designed under a EU research project to support policy decisions in the field of urban transport, in relation to their impacts on energy and environment. Mainly dedicated to policy evaluation purposes, ITEMS was attempting to fill a gap in the existing evaluation tools and methodologies for urban transport policies in the mid-nineties.

ITEMS integrates in a single comprehensive, workable and relevant package the more advanced methods and solutions to address properly the various issues related to urban transport, energy use and environmental impacts.
In that sense, ITEMS is a multidisciplinary simulation package based on expertise in the different fields involved: transport modeling, energy modeling, emissions modeling, external cost modeling, economy modeling.

For policy and strategic purposes ITEMS is used in two steps:

• First to produce a view of what will be the consequences, for the whole urban area, of current socio economic and technological evolutions, as well as the current urban transport policies (the so-called "base-line" scenario):
  
  • The transport demand.
    
  • The modal repartition of trips and traffics.
    
  • The stocks of vehicles.
    
  • The associated energy consumption and the related emissions.
    
  • The externalities resulting of the traffic.
    
    
• Second, to evaluate the change induced by policy measures as compared to the "base-line" situation.

Selected references

ITEMS has been used in the European METEOR project (2001-2006) to assess the impacts on energy and environment of CIVITAS initiatives for sustainable mobility, for 10 main European cities

For further information about this model and its applications, or to define an evaluation of your needs, please contact us