Case Study:

SPARTACUS

Overview

Some of the primary benefits of the SPARTACUS approach include modeling of the feedback between transportation and land use, and the disaggregation of air quality, noise, and land use data to allow the detailed assessment of socioeconomic impacts.

SPARTACUS (System for Planning and Research in Towns and Cities for Urban Sustainability) is a European project undertaken to analyze the implications of urban land use and transportation policies. The SPARTACUS research project included model development and policy testing in three European cities: Helsinki, Naples, and Bilbao. The project has successfully demonstrated a number of analytical approaches that can be used to model metropolitan-level policies not only in Europe, but in the United States as well.

The SPARTACUS system is based on an integrated transportation-land use model, MEPLAN. A Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Raster module is used to process many of the outputs of MEPLAN and to calculate and display micro-scale indicators. Additional analysis tools are used to process other model outputs, calculate impacts, and aggregate the results into economic, environmental, and social indices.

Figure 1. Traffic Noise Levels, Helsinki

Fig. 1 Traffic Noise Levels, Helsinki

Note: Large parts of the Helsinki Metropolitan Area are affected by high traffic noise levels. Noise impact areas are large in outlying areas around main roads and highways. However, only a few people live along the noisy links in these areas. In the baseline scenario, about 29 percent of the metropolitan population would feel disturbed by traffic noise in the peak hour.

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