Aimsun

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Aimsun

File:Aimsun Logo.png
ISIN	🆔
Industry	Mobility modeling
Founded 📆	November 11, 1997 (1997-11-11) in Barcelona, Spain
Founders 👔	Jaume Barceló Jaime L. Ferrer Jordi Casas David García
Headquarters 🏙️	Barcelona, Spain
Area served 🗺️	Worldwide
Key people	Jaime L. Ferrer (CEO) Alex Gerodimos (COO) Daniela Fuchs (CFO)
Products 📟	Aimsun Next , Aimsun Live, Aimsun Auto
Members
Number of employees	96
Parent	Siemens AG
🌐 Website	aimsun.com
📇 Address
📞 telephone

Founded in 1997, Aimsun is an international provider of software and services for transportation engineering.

The main fields of application are: traffic simulation, transportation planning, intelligent transportation systems and testing the impact of disruptive technologies in the field of transportation including self-driving cars and connected vehicles.

Aimsun has just under 100 employees; about 50 are based in Aimsun’s head office of Aimsun SLU in Barcelona and the rest are distributed across the company’s branch offices in Edinburgh, London, Madrid, Melbourne, Paris, New York City, Singapore and Sydney.

The software has 5,500 licensed users across 85 countries worldwide, including governments, research institutes, engineering consultancies and developers of artificial intelligence, machine learning, reinforcement learning and deep learning as applied to the field of transportation.

In 2018, Aimsun was acquired by Siemens Mobility for an undisclosed sum, and operates as a standalone entity within the Siemens Mobility ITS business segment.

Company history

1980 - 1997

Aimsun originated in the 1980s in Barcelona, Spain as a spin-off from the former LIOS laboratory (Laboratori d'Investigació Operativa i Simulació), a transport research team within the Department of Statistics and Operations Research at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. As members of the LIOS laboratory, the Aimsun founder members were active participants in EU-funded R&D programmes (Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development - Horizon 2020), particularly in the areas of the applications of high-performance computing and new telematic technologies to transportation. The main outcome of the decade of research in these fields was the creation of a prototype microscopic traffic simulator and a software environment for traffic modeling and analysis. The microsimulator was named AIMSUN2 (Advanced Interactive Microscopic Simulator for Urban and Non-Urban Networks).

1997 - 2004

The transport research team noticed an increasing demand for microsimulation to assist decision-making in the field of the design and evaluation of traffic systems, which implemented advanced concepts and technologies for traffic management and control. The lead-up to the Barcelona 1992 Summer Olympic Games signaled an opportunity for local authorities to redraw Barcelona’s urban landscape, with billions of euros of investment funding new urban access routes, ring roads, and airport terminals, among other projects. In response to this demand, in 1997 the team members decided to commercialize the microsimulator and the software environment and created a company originally known as TSS-Transport Simulation Systems.

Officially founded on 11th November 1997, the Aimsun team opened an office in carrer Tarragona in central Barcelona, with a core team dedicated to commercializing the software, while technical development continued at the university lab. The company originally sold AIMSUN within a simulation environment called GETRAM (Generic Environment for Traffic Analysis and Modeling), which also contained a traffic network graphical editor (TEDI), a network database, a module for storing results and an Application Programming Interface for interfacing assignment models.

2004

The company moved to a larger office in Barcelona on Passeig de Gràcia, and for the first time had separate departments dedicated to Development, Projects, Marketing, Accounts and Management.

2005 - 2010

In response to increasing government investment in road infrastructure and intelligent transportation systems. The Aimsun team started to develop a real-time computing decision support system called Aimsun Live. In 2005, an Aimsun Live pilot project launched in Singapore.

2010

Aimsun took the first step towards international expansion and opened a branch office in New York City. The US team was led by Alex Gerodimos, who became president of Aimsun Inc and also retained the role of commercial director. The office was located in Manhattan and offered on-the-ground support for Aimsun’s many traffic modeling projects for NYCDOT and NYSDOT, including the Manhattan Traffic Model, which was part of the Manhattan in Motion initiative.

2011

Aimsun opened a second branch office in Paris, France, headed by Aurore Remy, in order to support Aimsun’s long-term contract with la Mairie de Paris to develop the city’s traffic models. A major stride forward for the Aimsun Live platform was made when the team won a bid to participate in the development of a decision support system for Interstate 15 as part of the San Diego Association of Governments project, the San Diego Integrated Corridor Management System, which is still operational 24/7 today.

2012-1013

The Aimsun team opened its first office in the southern hemisphere, in central Sydney, NSW, headed by Alexandre Torday. Initially the office was set up in response to projects for Transport for New South Wales but later served all of Australia and New Zealand.

2014-2016

To support projects in the UK, the London branch office opened in 2014, led by Gavin Jackman. Major projects in the UK include the ONE traffic model for Transport for London, and the many Innovate UK - funded projects for studying the impact of connected and autonomous vehicles.

2017

The company underwent a complete rebranding, changing its logo, color scheme, name and products. TSS-Transport Simulation Systems became Aimsun, while the software names went from Aimsun to Aimsun Next (for offline modeling), while Aimsun Online became Aimsun Live. 2017 was also the year that Aimsun opened its first office in Asia, with an office in Singapore to support work with the Singapore Land Transport Authority. This office is headed by Karen Cheung.

2018

Aimsun was acquired by Siemens Mobility in April 2018, but continues to operate as a standalone entity, specialising in algorithms and operational know-how for mobility applications.

2019

Aimsun launched Auto, a new software platform for testing path planning algorithms for self-driving vehicles. It was intended as a complement to sensor testing tools and driving simulation software.

At the end of 2019, 22 years after its original commercialization, Aimsun has 9 offices worldwide, and its software is used in 85 countries and deployed in transportation networks worldwide, from New York City to Paris, San Diego, Toronto, Sydney, Singapore and London.

Aimsun’s activity

The software itself was first conceived as a prototype microscopic traffic simulator in the former LIOS (Laboratori d'Investigació Operativa i Simulació), a transport research laboratory of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. The simulator was first known as GETRAM (an acronym for Generic Environment for Traffic Analysis and Modeling), which also contained TEDI (a traffic network graphical editor), a network database, a module for storing results and an Application Programming Interface for interfacing assignment models. Over time, these editing and simulation elements were integrated into a single software platform called Aimsun; macroscopic functionalities were then added, followed by mesoscopic simulation, hybrid microscopic-mesoscopic simulation, travel demand modeling and, most recently, a V2X (Vehicle-to-everything) Software Development Kit for modeling connected and autonomous vehicles and an external agent interface.

The principle of integrated mobility modeling

Traditional transportation modeling operated in silos, with different methodologies and software applications built for and used by different professional groups. Traffic engineers used “microscopic” tools (microsimulation) to simulate signal operations in a handful of intersections; transportation planners used macroscopic scale models for strategic estimations of future capacity needs; and academics, seeking a happy medium between microscopic detail and macroscopic simplicity, advocated the use of “mesoscopic” tools for “dynamic traffic assignment.” The result: inefficiencies stemming from the need to enlist separate approaches, data inputs, budgets, and teams for each tier of modeling.

In 2005, in version 5 of Aimsun Next, the Aimsun team united microscopic and macroscopic functionality in a single application. Version 6 added mesoscopic simulation to the mix, and version 6.1 added pedestrian modeling. Version 7 brought hybrid meso-micro simulation, while Version 8 introduced a four-step transportation forecasting model, making Aimsun Next the industry’s first fully integrated mobility modeling package.

Literature

• Investigating and Calibrating the Dynamics of Vehicles in Traffic Micro-simulation Models, Transportation Research Procedia, Volume 14, 2016, Pages 1782-1791
• Connecting microscopic traffic simulation and LISA+ external signal control, Transportation Research Procedia, Volume 27, 2017, Pages 420-427
• Expressway crash risk prediction using back propagation neural network: A brief investigation on safety resilience, Accident Analysis & Prevention, Volume 124, March 2019, Pages 180-192
• Two-dimensional macroscopic model for large scale traffic networks, Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Volume 122, April 2019, Pages 309-326
• Optimisation of lane-changing advisory at the motorway lane drop bottleneck, Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, Volume 106, September 2019, Pages 303-316
• Capability-enhanced Aimsun with Real-time Signal Timing Control, Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, Volume 111, 5 February 2014, Pages 262-271
• Simulation-based evacuation planning using state-of-the-art sensitivity analysis techniques, Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory, Volume 89, December 2018, Pages 160-174
• Rapid algorithm for finding the best combination of signaling phases using optimization methods, International Journal of Transportation Science and Technology, Volume 7, Issue 4, December 2018, Pages 229-240

External links

• Aimsun website
• Siemens Mobility - Road Solutions - Traffic Management - Strategic Management and Coordination portfolio

Category:Transportation planning

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