HERA is software dedicated to assess the energy consumption and GHG emissions of roads traffic.

It incorporates two models for different conditions: free flow conditions and toll plazas. In contrast to other modeling approaches, HERA is valid for every country or region and for every road segment or network. It has the possibility of comparing several scenarios or road alternatives. The input data and results could be import or export from geo-references databases.

HERA is of particular interest for assessing alternatives and strategies focused on alignment design, speed adjustment, traffic flow management or fleet composition.

“HERA supports planning and decision-making strategies towards energy efficiency and low-carbon road traffic”

Transport

• Kyoto Protocol, energy efficiency plans… Assessment tools are needed to evaluate abatement strategies in road transport seeking to reduce climate change impacts.
• Carbon footprint assessment of the entire life cycle of the road is becoming under regulation in many countries, i.e. in Spain the new Environmental Assessment Law, 2013.

“Improving the alignment of a hilly road could result in 13.7% of annual carbon footprint savings; Speed reduction of light vehicles by 10km/h could save 4.5% of annual carbon footprint of traffic”

Transport

• Currently, there are many software-based tools to estimate emissions and energy consumption of traffic (COPERT, TREMOVE, etc). But, they are usually based on aggregated data and don’t includes the link level assessment.
• Road Administrations: to assist with decision-making towards energy efficiency and low carbon actions of road traffic.
• Consultants for: environmental management, quantification of carbon footprint along the road network, assessment of traffic management strategies, identification of most polluting stretches (so called “hot spots”)

• Scale- HERA can be applied to any highway network in any location following a segment-by-segment approach.
• Toll plazas - apart from free flow conditions, HERA assess footprint at toll plazas evaluating the energy consumption of different collection systems: manual, electronic toll collection and open road tolling.
• Transport policy measures could be better managed and evaluated with HERA: speed management, fleet renewal, heavy duty vehicles flows, road design (gradient) and toll collection systems.
• HERA produces geo-referenced outputs: annual carbon and energy footprints (CO2eq/year and MJ/year).
• The system has an interface to link its input/outputs with a GIS, providing geographic representation of the energy consumption and carbon footprint.

“Speed reduction of light vehicles by 10km/h could save 4.5% of annual carbon footprint of traffic”