Traffic influences the people's quality of life in various ways, both in a positive as in a negative sense. Traffic is inevitable in order to guarantee people's accessibility to various types of functions. On the other hand, traffic noise, traffic emissions, road safety, threatens people health and well–being. Because quality of life is more and more under pressure, because of the increasing traffic flow, traffic livability has become a key issue in nowadays' (Flemish) traffic planning.
Therefore, it is remarkable that little research has been done about assessing the total impact of traffic on the quality of life of the surrounding areas. Methods that are currently commonly used in Flanders have some important restrictions; the most crucial one is that the impact of traffic is considered to be very local. This is remarkable because people's quality of life depends on the whole living environment, covering a wider area.
For this reason, a project was set up by the Flemish Policy Research Centre Mobility & Public Works in order to develop a model to give a better representation of the impact of traffic on quality of life. The main focus was to achieve a better simulation of people's exposure to different types of traffic impacts by including not only the exposure at the home address, but also the impacts during activities at other locations and the impacts during trips.

urban traffic, livability, quality of life, travel behaviour, traffic noise, traffic emissions