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WinKFZ 7.1

WinKFZ is powerful software system for simulating the atmospheric dispersion of traffic-related emissions on inner-city streets and motorways, and helps assess the resulting traffic-induced immissions. Planning offices, private individuals offering consultanting services and government bodies concerned with environmental issues can use the application to simulate and assess existing or planned construction work and traffic measures.

Version history

WinKFZ 7.0 was initially released in mid-2004, implementing and massively extending the concepts of the earlier DOS application "KFZ". A series of updates including small extensions and bugfixes was released.
WinKFZ 7.1 includes a plethora of new, improved and extended functions and tools. It was released to the general public in October of 2005. An extensive list of changes is available.

Creating a scenario

A WinKFZ scenario is initially created by defining the location and the size of the relevant area. The user can then proceed to add elements to the scene.
Elements are defined as objects that have a direct or indirect impact on the immission distribution in the defined field. There are six classes of elements:
    Screenshot
  • Streets: Based on physical information (number of lanes, width of street, etc.) and traffic data (vehicles/24h, car/truck ratio, etc.), streets serve as line-shaped particle emitters during the simulation. Advanced settings allow streets to function as bridges and tunnels.
  • Emission points: These objects serve as point- or circle-shaped particle emitters during the simulation, e.g. chimneys, evaporating puddles, etc. A wide range of parameters is available, which enable the user to recreate almost any real-life scenario. New in WinKFZ 7.1
  • Buildings: Buildings can be used to simulate wind-channelling effects in street canyons. Additionally, they can be defined as parking buildings for additional, diffuse area-based particle emissions.
  • Barriers: Defined as a wall, mound or combination of both, sound barriers not only deflect accoustic pollution, but also channel emissions and protect areas behind the structure from heavy immission loads.
Additional scene elements are:
  • Receptor points: the immission loads for these user-defined points in the map are later explicitly mentioned in the results window.
  • Topography isohypses: if no topography datafile is available for the scenario, the user can create topography isohypses, assigning heights to polygon-enclosed areas. These elements can later be exported to a datafile, which in turn can be imported into the project and incorporated into the simulation.
  • Meteorological stations: The user can enter one or more sets of data for a number of meteorological stations. This data is later combined with the topography and man-made structures to provide a 3D windfield. An advanced windfield model can optionally be applied to simulate slow flow, or to determine the mixing height.
To categorise elements and make project management more efficient, WinKFZ allows the user to group elements into layers, allowing the user to hide unneeded data or to highlight relevant elements. New in WinKFZ 7.1
Furthermore, WinKFZ allows the user to create and execute macros in the VBScript programming language, with an extensive and fully documented API for accessing the elements of a scenario. This allows a high degree of project automatisation, e.g. switching between two sets of source data within the same project file, thus increasing user productivity. New in WinKFZ 7.1

Particle simulation

When the scenario input has been completed, the user can select a range of pollutants for the dispersion simulation. By choosing a year (2000-2020), the user can define which emission factor tables are used. Finally, the user chooses a simulation mode:
    Screenshot
  • One-hour mean: Calculates the result of a single hour of emission and the resulting impact. This mode can take numerous meteorological stations into account.
  • Weighted episodes: Having entered a number of separate meteorological situations with their according weighting factors, the application simulates each situation separately and later combines the weighted immissions of each situation into a final result. This method can be used for calculating a 24-hour-mean, or an annual average immission. This mode only accepts a single meteorological station.
  • Time series: As with weighted episodes, a time series consists of a number of meteorological episodes. In this simulation mode, however, each episode is the continuation of the previous episode, as particles already in the field from previous episodes are taken into account. This allows the user to simulate specific meteorological conditions, e.g. turning winds or dissolving mixing levels. This mode can incorporate the data of numerous meteorological stations.
Prior to starting the simulation, the scenario undergoes extensive plausibility checks to ensure that the user has not entered questionable or conflicting data. Warnings and errors are displayed in a separate field in the main window to assist the user in quickly solving any potential problems.
Depending on the complexity of the scenario and the number of episodes and selected pollutants, the dispersion simulation can require up to several hours.

Simulation results

Once a simulation has been completed, the results are stored in a database and can be accessed and displayed until the results set or the entire scenario is deleted. The user has a variety of options when accessing the simulation results:
Screenshot
  • Colour scale: The user can set up the scale to be used when plotting the immission distribution.
  • Colour mode: A series of possible colour palettes ensures that the generated images are suitable for different purposes, e.g. on-screen display, or b/w printing.
  • Resolution: The user can choose between 600, 800 and 1000px plot resolution.
Having set up the plot, it is rendered and displayed in a separate window. Here, the user has many more options:
  • Additional layers (streets, buildings, etc) can be added/removed as required by the user.
  • The user can define a line based on two points within the plot. Automatically, an immission profile along the chosen line is displayed.
  • The windfield that was calculated and used for any simulation can be set up with a number of parameters and is then inserted into the graphical display as a layer. New in WinKFZ 7.1
  • When displaying the results of a time-series simulation (i.e. correlating episodes that are based on each other, not a weighted average value of non-correlating episodes), the user can plot any of the simulation episodes that make up the weighted average value. New in WinKFZ 7.1
The separate images of a time series simulation (see above) can be exported and compressed into an animation file. New in WinKFZ 7.1
Additionally, a hierarchical set of tables and charts gives the user all the data he needs to incorporate information on the simulation in other documents, e.g. spreadsheets or reports. New in WinKFZ 7.1
A graphical tool for visualising the difference between two scenarios (e.g. "before/after implementing traffic measure") is provided.
All graphical and text-based results can easily be copied, printed and exported to a file.

Experience

This model has been deployed by Schorling & Partner to provide expert opinions assessing the effect of construction measures and/or traffic measures on traffic-induced immissions for numerous customers, including the German and Austrian governments, various German and Austrian cities, and the German armed forces.

Pricing and availability

Currently, the German-language version of WinKFZ is available for purchase. For further information or to request a demonstration of the product, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Screenshots of WinKFZ Arrow  
Summary of functions (PDF, English) Arrow  
Summary of functions (PDF, German) Arrow  
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