At present there are significant activities in the research area of the environmental impact from road traffic. Specifically, great efforts are made to provide a better understanding of the relationship between driving behavior and vehicle emissions. In order to have reliable predictions of the vehicle emissions from road traffic, the actual traffic needs to be described. In this thesis we are considering the estimation of the speed and acceleration of the road traffic based on spot measurements of single vehicles. We present a theoretical framework to define parameters that account for all traffic traveling on a specific road network. It becomes obvious that a theoretical framework is of great help both for defining parameters and deriving appropriate estimators. To obtain estimates of the parameter, measurements are needed. The Swedish National Road Administration uses a Metor 2000 traffic analyzer to conduct such measurements. Based on results of experiments, we have investigated the performance of Metor 2000 to obtain the speed and acceleration in single vehicles. We have also examined the ability to obtain speed and acceleration profiles of all traffic along roads by spot measurements, specifically on roads with signal-controlled intersection. To summarize, spot measurements is a promising method to obtain speed and acceleration of all traffic traveling on a road network. But more research is necessary to improve the estimation methods and especially to develop the relationship between emissions and the traffic parameters. (Author/publisher)
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