Using SUMO towards Proactive Public Mobility: Some Lessons Learned

Transportation causes several adverse environmental effects, including the emissions of air pollutants and greenhouse gases. Thus, shifting global mobility towards novel and more sustainable solutions is needed, for instance by enhancing public transports, promoting active modes, or adopting more sustainable technologies. In this context, simulators of urban mobility offer a valuable tool for assessing the impact of new policies, by providing support in designing traffic circulation plans and assessing the effectiveness of new transportation modes. However, building realistic scenarios is challenging due to data reliability issues.In this paper, we present some lessons learned on the use of the SUMO simulator for sustainable mobility. Through a case study in the city of Genoa, Italy, we described the challenges we faced, which lead us to a significant discrepancy between simulated and real data. Despite manual data cleansing/refinement improved the accuracy, data quality remains still a concern. Thus, in this paper we highlight to the ITS community the need for improving data reliability to preliminary assess eco-friendly transportation solutions.