Experts in the traffic modeling industry gave an informative presentation to a well-attended evening seminar held by the CIHT Qatar Group on 20 March 2018.

Eng. Haydar Al Rukabi, Managing Director of Muhel Consulting and Dr. Wissam El Hamra, Transportation Modelling Team Lead, at the Land Transport Planning Department (LTPD), Ministry of Transport and Communications (MoTC) explained the use of micro-simulation to the audience. The talk focused on how micro-simulation modeling is used to assess the impact of transportation and development schemes prior to construction.

Qatar is currently undergoing rapid growth with many mega projects planned. As part of the development assessment process by the MoTC, many of these projects require traffic modeling assessments to be undertaken in order to understand the development’s traffic impact, assess options and also provide the necessary traffic mitigation measures.

The speakers provided the audience with visual representation of transportation assessment case studies in Qatar and UK.

In order to ensure that the assessments are representative, local factors such as driving behavior, vehicle mix proportions and rounded vehicle lengths parameters were discussed in the presentation. The MoTC – LTPD welcomes experts and researchers in these areas to contribute their findings to MoTC to further collaborate and refine the local driving behavior parameters.

The presentations were well received by the audience, with a vibrant questions and answer session following the main presentation.

CIHT Qatar Group thanks its sponsors for the event: AECOM, BG&E, DCE, Egis, Fugro, Muhel, PAF, Seero, TMS and WSP.