Siemens’ Critical Scenario Creation software: the foundation for revolutionizing road safety

Siemens is proud to announce that EIT Urban Mobility, Europe’s leading institute for advancing urban mobility, has approved a grant for the ROADSCOR (Road Optimization Analysis for Design Safety by Conflict Review) project. This collaboration between Siemens Digital Industries Software, Roadscor, Aimsun, and Royal HaskoningDHV represents a significant milestone in leveraging cutting-edge technologies to enhance road safety.
The ROADSCOR project focuses on adapting Siemens’ proprietary Critical Scenario Creation software—already widely used in validating Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Automated Driving Systems (ADS)—to address the safety of road infrastructure for all users.

Vision Zero: The global drive toward safer roads
Globally, road safety is a growing concern, driven by initiatives like Vision Zero, which aims to eliminate traffic fatalities by 2050 and halve casualties by 2030. Achieving these ambitious goals requires a comprehensive approach that addresses all elements of the transportation triangle: vehicles, drivers, and infrastructure.
While Siemens has long been a trusted name in improving vehicle safety through its Simcenter software, the ROADSCOR project extends this expertise to the infrastructure side of the equation. By bridging these two pillars, Siemens and its partners are delivering solutions that advance the Vision Zero mission.
Proven success: expanding automotive insights to infrastructure
In 2022, Siemens, in collaboration with the FIA and Aimsun, successfully applied its automotive methodologies to infrastructure challenges by assessing multiple intersection designs in Singapore for the deployment of Autonomous Vehicles. This project[1] proved that the tools and techniques used to benchmark vehicle safety could also be used to assess road design.
Building on this success, the ROADSCOR project will streamline the Critical Scenario Creation process for practical use by traffic engineers and road authorities. The goal is to provide an evaluation tool based on objective metrics that can be directly applied to improve intersection safety and other critical areas of urban mobility infrastructure.
Key objectives of the ROADSCOR project
The ROADSCOR initiative focuses on advancing Siemens’ technology and methodologies to meet the specific needs of infrastructure planning:
- Enhancing the scoring system: Developing a robust and practical framework for evaluating and scoring road safety at intersections and other high-risk areas.
- Improving Technology Readiness Level (TRL): Advancing the software’s capabilities to ensure it meets the operational needs of traffic engineers and road planners.
- Scaling compute architecture: Refining the cloud-based, high-performance computing framework to handle massive datasets efficiently.
- Delivering real-world insights: Testing the methodology in two major cities in Belgium and Italy to validate its effectiveness in diverse, real-world settings.

Siemens contribution to the project
- Simulation Tools: Siemens provides Simcenter Prescan software to simulate all possible conflicts, even when resulting from routes that are not likely or allowed. This innovative approach provides traffic engineers with new insights to design safer urban intersections.
- Providing methodology: In addition, Siemens has developed Critical Scenario Creation, a proprietary and patented methodology to systematically, and automatically, generate unsafe-unknown scenarios for a specific operational design domain based on a map of that scene, and (optionally) recorded data.
- Conflict analysis: Siemens leads the “Conflict analysis” work package. It focuses on conflict analysis by importing traffic model results and configuring simulations. The simulation maps all possible routes for different road users, including pedestrians and bicyclists, regardless of their sensibility. The results, ranked by likelihood and severity, will inform measures and modifications, which will then be re-evaluated through further simulations.
- Collaboration with traffic engineers: During the project, Siemens will collaborate with traffic engineers from Royal HaskoningDHV and Aimsun to conduct assessments of intersection designs. They will assist in analyzing and assessing the safety of road designs, incorporating measures and modifications to improve safety
- Data-driven insights: Siemens’ conflict analysis will provide data-driven insights into road safety risks, allowing for a proactive approach to improving road safety. This will help in making informed decisions to enhance the safety of road designs
- Product development: Siemens will contribute to the definition of the Roadscor-rating and the development of the tool as a SaaS product. Siemens will help set up the Roadscor environment for assessments and define the solution architecture and interfaces for the transformation from a service to a SaaS product
Technology with purpose
This project aligns with Siemens’ vision of using digital technologies to create a better physical world and its mission to create technology with purpose. By empowering traffic engineers and road authorities with advanced tools, Siemens and its partners are paving the way for safer, smarter urban environments.
The ROADSCOR project not only showcases the versatility of Siemens’ Critical Scenario Creation technology but also underscores its commitment to tackling one of the most pressing challenges of modern mobility: ensuring that everyone—whether traveling by car, bike, or foot—arrives safely at their destination.
Would you like getting more information on Siemens participation to the ROADSCOR project, please contact Gwen Van Vugt or Mohsen Alirezaei
References
[1] SAE paper: A Systematic Approach for Creation of SOTIF’s Unknown Unsafe Scenarios: An Optimization based Method, Tajinder Singh, Edwin van Hassel, Akshay Sheorey, Mohsen Alirezaei