References
VORtech runs several dozens of projects each year. These vary widely in terms of subject and methods. A complete overview of the kind of projects that we do is therefore difficult. Below we present a few typical projects to give you at least a flavour of the kind of work that we do.
The quality of retreaded tyres
Half of the trucks in Europe drive on tyres that are in their second life. This saves costs for the transporters and has obvious environmental benefits. But new European guidelines threaten this line of business: in the future, retreaded tyres must be classified according to their safety and environmental performance just like new tyres now. But because of their individual history, such a classification is hard to give for retreaded tyres. VORtech is involved in a research to find a reliable way of determining the classification of retreaded tyres. Read more>>
LINC: climate as a network
How can we learn to understand the enormous complexity of our climate system? That is the central question in the LINC project, a European project that trains a new generation of scientists in interdisciplinary climate research. VORtech supports the research and trains the researchers to make good software. Read more>>
Monitoring system for shipping emissions
A consortium composed of BMT ARGOSS, KNMI and VORtech is working on a system to monitor the air quality over major shipping lanes. The development is a research project for techniques to use satellite observations in air quality models. Eventually, this should lead to operational applications in the field of air quality. Read more>>
Speeding-up an Origin-Destination traffic estimator
The number of people traveling from one place to another is an important input for traffic models. The Dutch Ministery of Public Works uses the AVV-MAT program to estimate this number. With a relatively small effort, VORtech made this program 10 to 30 times faster. Several different techniques have been used: algorithmics, implementation improvements and parallel computing on multi-core PC's. Read more>>
Maintenance of the SIMONA package
SIMONA is a package for shallow water simulation. It is used by the water management department (Rijkswaterstaat) of the Dutch government for simulating the rivers and the coastal waters. It plays an important role not only in policy studies, but also in the daily predictions of eb and tide. From 2004 until 2010, SIMONA has been maintained and extended by a consortium of Logica, VORtech and Alkyon under the supervision of Rijkswaterstaat and Deltares. Read more>>
Porting Fluidprop to Linux
VORtech has developed a Linux version of FluidProp, a software toolbox that computes fluid properties. FluidProp was previously available only for Windows. Now it is also available on all Linux distributions. This considerably increases its appeal for a much wider engineering and scientific community. Read more>>
A tool for sky-glow prediction
A new application allows a realistic prediciton of the sky-glow, i.e. the effect that lighting has on the night sky. Dit makes it possible to include this aspect in environmental effect reports prior to the installation of new lighting. Read more>>