What’s new?

Here you find an overview of the latest changes, enhancements, and fixes of PTV Optima.

The versions are ordered starting from the more recent.

New Features and Changes

PTV Optima now supports the capability to receive data from pollutants sensors based on Bosch API.

Traffic Supervisor can be configured for presenting the new Bosch sensors layer, where the user can:

  • Select the pollutant.

  • Analyze the level of emissions for the selected pollutant.

For additional details see:

→ Enabling communication with Bosch API

→ BoschAQSensors

→ Bosch Sensors layer

New Features and Changes

In PTV Optima the TomTom interface has been improved, adding the option to handle the feed TomTom Traffic Flow Detailed.

The TomTom Traffic Flow Detailed feed supports the configuration option Dynamic Sectioning, that describes the road links in smaller sections when conditions vary considerably within a longer road stretch.

With dynamic sectioning, the speeds provided by TomTom are defined on variable length segments along the usual reference road, providing a more accurate location of congestions, therefore a more accurate congestion prediction by Optima.

For additional details see → TomTom Interface.

PTV Optima is compatible with PTV Visum 2024 (see → System requirements).

Optima is still compatible with PTV Visum 2022 and PTV Visum 2023.

New Features and Changes

PTV Optima now extends the capabilities of the PuTUpdater service.

Optima PuTUpdater service is a standalone application that used to be launched manually, once a new Visum model containing the updated PuT supply was prepared by the modeler.

Now, PuTUpdater has been improved to be a service running on one of the Optima servers.

PuTUpdater automatically updates the Optima model every time a new static public transport supply update is released, in the form of a GTFS file.

The updating activity works monitoring a file path, configured in GTFSFilePath .

For additional details:

→ PuTUpdater methodology

→ PuTUpdater configuration

 

PTV Optima has dismissed the Traffic Data Warehouse (TDW) module.

New Features and Changes

PTV Optima now shows in TS GUI:

  • The delays of the incoming vehicles at a stop.

  • The timetable of a running vehicle.

For additional details:

New Features and Changes

PTV Optima now shows improved performance in managing the weekly changes in TomTom speed data.

More in detail, every week TomTom speed data changes because of their map data being updated. Whenever this happens, a lengthy process has to be performed to match the new data to Optima map. This used to block the data import process itself, now this has been optimized so that the data import and the map update are managed parallelly.

For additional details:

→ TomTom Interface

New Features and Changes

PTV Optima Hyperpath now supports the modeling of generic numeric restrictions on single links, with respect to the path request transport system properties.

Constraints are modeled as link User Defined Attributes (UDAs), and compared to the request transportation system attributes, satisfying one of the constraints of type: "greater than", "smaller or equal than", etc.

Therefore, it is possible to model for example narrow roads, low bridges, or HOV (High-Occupancy Vehicle) lanes (requiring a minimum amount of passengers).

New Features and Changes

Optima now supports latest INRIX API, that introduces some limitations about:

  • Bounding box size that cannot exceed 2° in latitude or in longitude (limitation is inherited from the original INRIX API).

  • Custom GeoIDs are not supported anymore.

Optima overcomes these two limitations by allowing list of requests rather than a single one, therefore querying by GeoID, to allow multiple GeoIDs. If configured, all of these are used for the two processes:

  • Checking the latest version of the map

  • Downloading the map (XDS) data fetching the live segment speeds.

In general, Optima INRIX interface supports either bounding box-based queries (if smaller than 2' on any axis), or GeoID-based queries.

For additional details:

→ INRIX Interface

New Features and Changes

PTV Optima now supports the latest version of the INRIX traffic speed service, named Traffic segment speed. Furthermore, INRIX is removing the old version of that interface, simply named Traffic speed, so Optima does not support it anymore.

In detail, has been updated:

New Features and Changes

PTV Optima now supports:

  • Vissim version 23.0, used by Optima Micro component and also for the associated subnetwork model preparation.

    Previous Vissim versions are not supported anymore.

    → System requirements

    → Optima Micro prerequisites

  • KPI Path Travel Time has been improved, computing now the real expected travel time for a vehicle which starts the path at the defined forecast distance. The previous computation was based adding travel times of links along the path, starting each link at the input forecast distance.

    The improvement is applied to the KPI for modules Short-Term Forecast and Real-time Scenario Evaluation only.

    → Path Travel Time - Provider: Short-Term Forecast

  • A simplified deploy of PuT_ETA component, reading the stop.stop_sequence information from the Visum model, avoiding the previous SQL query on the Optima DB after TDE export:

    → Public Transport (PuT) ETA configuration

    → Public transport

New Features and Changes

Has been simplified and improved the set of KPI attributes shown through the pop-up window in Traffic Supervisor (layer KPI section).

For additional details, see the section How to get the set of KPI attributes in:

→ KPI layer

New Features and Changes

PTV Optima now supports a new parameter layerStyleTitleField to configure the layers in Traffic Supervisor. With layerStyleTitleField you can set which text to display as layer style name, from the connected GeoServer instance layer.

For additional details:

→ Global configurations

→ Layers configuration

New Features and Changes

PTV Optima now supports four new optional configuration parameters for the INRIX interface:

  • appTokenURL

  • mapDownloadUrl

  • mapVersionUrl

  • segmentXdsFile

For additional details:

→ INRIX Interface configuration

New Features and Changes

In Traffic Supervisor, the SQL query has been removed from the pop-up of KPI details.

New Features and Changes

PTV Optima, for a specific set of APIs, allows the configuration of the date format:

  • In ISO 8601 date format, in Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) with time zone offset.

  • In legacy format

In the current version this configuration is available for the listed set of endpoints:

→ Getting the status of a simulation engine

→ Optima KPI status

→ Getting KPI results based on Simulation Group ID

→ Getting KPI results based on KPI ID

→ Getting KPI results based on Provider ID

New Features and Changes

PTV Optima is compatible with PTV Visum 2023 (→ System requirements).

New Features and Changes

PTV Optima now supports a new API for the Machine Learning Forecast (MLF) engine, able to scale based on the load.

The new API returns the MLF forecast, for all streets involved, covering the interval:

[Request's Timestamp, Request's Timestamp + 1 hour].

Request's Timestamp is the time instant associated to the API call.

For additional details:

→ MLF API

New Features and Changes

PTV Optima now supports a new KPI template for the Machine Learning Forecast Engine. You can monitor the percentage of streets having a forecast GEH or a forecast relative speed under a given threshold.

New Features and Changes

PTV Optima now supports:

  • Acquiring data from multiple TomTom Intermediate Traffic Flow data feeds in the same installation, by properly listing all the needed feeds in the configuration:

    → TomTom Interface

  • .NET Framework 6.

New Features and Changes

PTV Optima now supports:

  • The capability to define two branches (hypo-critical and hyper-critical) of the fundamental diagram of the simulation engine via power law expressions set by User Defined Attributes (UDAs) in VISUM.
  • DATEX II version 2.3, being backward compatible with the previous DATEX II version 2.2. With DATEX II 2.3, Optima adds the OpenLR location reference to the supported location types for events.

New Features and Changes

PTV Optima has a new connector toward the Econolite Centracs system, to gather traffic signal data.

New Features and Changes

PostgreSQL component has been upgraded to the version 14.3.

PostGIS component has been upgraded to the version 3.2.1.

For a complete list of PTV Optima system requirements:

→ System requirements.

New Features and Changes

PTV Optima provides support for handling:

  • Rerouting events
  • Demand events

  • Signal events

    A rerouting event consists of a compound of information used for the dynamic update of the turn probabilities.

    Managing a rerouting event, the traffic operator advices or enforces different routes with respect to a main one that is experimenting problems (for example, due to roadworks)

    It's very easy to create alternative paths and it is possible to force the path to stay on the main (simulated) network.

    For the rerouting event model, see:

    → Rerouting event model

    You can handle rerouting events with a specific API:

    → DATEX II rerouting events

    PTV Optima provides the setting and visualization of rerouting events with Traffic Supervisor GUI:

    → Event management

    → Rerouting event setting

    A demand event allows to model a change in the “demand” associated to a “special event”, insisting on a specific zone (for example, a football match). In this case, an abnormal traffic is generated (attracted) from (to) a specific zone.

    For the demand event model, see:

    → Demand events methodology

    You can handle demand events with a specific API:

    → DATEX II demand events

    PTV Optima provides the setting and visualization of demand events with Traffic Supervisor GUI:

    → Event management

    → Demand event setting

    PTV Optima manages signal control events, providing capabilities based on DATEX II extensions.

    You can handle signal events with a specific API:

    → Signal control events

    You can also manage, with Traffic Supervisor GUI, signal events associated to a scenario:

    → Scenario management

  • PTV Optima provides a quality measure of the forecast produced with Machine Learning Forecast engine:

    → Forecast Quality Indicators: MLF

  • Compatibility with Python 2.7 for VISUM 2021 and 2022.

  • Compatibility for VISUM 2021 and 2022 with both Python versions 2.7 and 3.x.

  • Upgrade of OpenLR library and the associated configuration:

    → OpenLR

    → OpenLR decoder configuration

  • Upgrade of INRIX interface:

    → INRIX Interface

  • TomTom interface enhancements:

    → TomTom Interface

  • Pre-computed RLIN (Result LINks) module provides an XML file containing the latest forecast results:

    → Installing pre-computed RLIN module

  • MTF Status API for getting the status of the Mid-Term Forecast engine:

    → Getting the status of the MTF scheduler

  • Several security improvements. Main changes:

    • Protection against CSRF attacks for user management functionalities.
    • Safer Management of HTTP headers in Traffic Supervisor GUI.
    • Reduction of the default expiration time for the session token.

  • Unbinding Optima from Oracle JDK. Optima has been officially tested with:

    • Amazon Corretto JDK 8.282.08.1.

    • Oracle JDK 1.8.0_281.

  • GeoServer component has been upgraded to the version 2.20.2 (for more details, see GeoServer version).

New Features and Changes

PTV Optima Micro provides traffic forecasts for sub-networks which are typically a smaller selection of the large-scale Optima model.

For an high level introduction to Optima Micro, see:

→ How Optima works in a nutshell > OPTIMA MICRO

Optima Micro is an advanced module that can be deployed according with:

→ Installing Optima Micro

The modeling activity proceed through a set of operations based also on PTV Vissim and PTV Visum, as indicated in:

→ Modeling Optima Micro

About Optima Micro methodology and configuration, see:

→ Optima Micro

Optima Micro provides a new set of APIs, as indicated in:

→ Optima Micro

The Traffic Supervisor GUI provides:

New Features and Changes

A new API is exposed to get information about the Mid-Term Forecast scheduling.

For more details see:

→ MTF main configuration > MTF node configuration

→ Getting the status of the MTF scheduler

New Features and Changes

From this version on, Optima officially supports PTV Visum version 20.

For a complete list of PTV Optima system requirements:

→ System requirements.

PTV Visum is necessary to build a PTV Optima base model:

→ Software needed to build a base Optima model.

New Features and Changes

GeoServer component has been upgraded to the version 2.15.5 (for more details, see GeoServer version).

Now you can deploy an Optima system architecture horizontally scaling the Geoserver component.

This option is capable to better handling the GeoServer workload, improving the performance of Traffic Supervisor (→ About Traffic Supervisor) and of the entire system.

The old installation setup is still applicable but the standard installation should follow the new paradigm.

For further details see:

→ Installing Optima: a scalable architecture

→ Installing Optima on three servers

New Features and Changes

A new version of API for triggering a Short-Term Forecast simulation.

This version is compatible with previous versions of Optima.

Now you can send a request to Optima to force the automatically starting of a new simulation, handling situations in which the engine is busy and you need to stop it.

For further details see:

→ Getting the status of a simulation engine

→ Starting a simulation