Air quality in European cities is still a challenge, with various urban areas frequently exceeding the PM2.5 and NO2 concentration levels allowed by the European Union Air Quality Standards. This is ...a problem both in terms of legislation compliance, but also in terms of health of citizens, as it has been recently estimated that 400 to 450 thousand people die prematurely every year due to poor air quality. Air quality in cities can be improved with a number of interventions, at different sectoral (industry, traffic, residential, etc …) and geographical (international, European, national, local, etc.) levels. In this paper we explore the potential of city level plans to improve mobility and air quality (excluding electro-mobility options, not considered in this study). We applied the “Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans” (SUMPs) framework to 642 cities in Europe and modelled how the measures they include may impact at first on mobility and emissions at urban level, and then on urban background concentrations of PM2.5 and NO2. Results show that annual averages moderately improve for both pollutants, with reductions of urban background concentrations up to 2% for PM2.5 and close to 4% for NO2. The impact on NO2 at street level (that will be higher than on urban background) is not evaluated in this work. The air quality improvement of the simulated SUMP would only partially alleviate air quality problems in urban areas, but such a reduction in the emissions of air pollutants should still be considered as a positive result of SUMPs, given that they correspond to a set of low-cost measures that can be implemented at local level. Furthermore, the introduction of electro-mobility options (not considered here) would increase the impact on air quality. Other types of benefits, such as reduced fuel consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, higher impact at street level or accident rates reduction further add to the overall positive impact.
•SUMPs (Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans) concept have been applied to 642 cities In Europe.•Impact on modelled “urban background concentrations” has been evaluated.•Results show that this impact is limited for “urban background concentrations”.•The impact of SUMPs on street level concentrations, and electro-mobility options, are not evaluated in this paper.•Other benefits of SUMPs (on greenhouse gases, reduced accident rates, etc …) should be also considered.
Measures promoting active mobility – walking or cycling – are often seen as an effective strategy to meet multiple urban objectives. The advantages of such behavioural changes cover multiple ...dimensions at public and individual level, including positive impacts on health, safety, climate, economy, environment and air quality. However, there is still a considerable potential for increasing the uptake of active mobility in urban areas. This paper explores the determinants of active mobility choice and compares the demographic, socio-economic and cultural factors that influence it. The methodology combines extensive survey data, an EU-wide transport model and detailed indicators of external costs of transport with a Gradient Boosting Machine Learning approach. The model based scenarios quantify the benefit in terms of external costs savings from increasing active mobility shares. Such savings – at EU level, can reach the amount of 15 billion euro per year for a shift of 10% of trips to active mobility modes.
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•Active mobility can have positive impacts on the society and the environment.•We explore the determinants of active mobility.•We combine data, models and cost indicators with a machine learning approach.•We evaluate external costs savings from increased active mobility shares, in the EU27.•Such savings can reach 15 billion euro per year, for a 10% shift from car to active mobility.
This paper presents SHERPA-City, a web application to assess the potential of traffic measures to abate NO2 air pollution in cities. The application is developed by the Joint Research Centre. It is ...freely available (https://integrated-assessment.jrc.ec.europa.eu) and allows the user to perform a fast screening of possible NO2 abatement measures addressing traffic in European cities. SHERPA-City results depend on the quality of the default input data. It is therefore important to stress that the SHERPA-City default traffic flows, emission factors, fleet composition, road network topology, NO2 pollution from other sources and meteorological data are based on EU-wide datasets that may not always represent perfectly a particular local situation. This is why the SHERPA-City allows the default data to be substituted by local data, to better reflect local features. This tool must be considered as a first step in exploring options to abate NO2 air pollution through transport measures. The final decisions should be based, wherever possible, on full-scale modelling studies incorporating local knowledge.
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•A free user-friendly web application to evaluate the impact of traffic measures on NO2 concentrations in European cities.•EU wide default traffic data and emission factors are provided.•Possibility to upload own traffic data and emission factors.•A case study on Madrid Low Emission Zones demonstrates the key features of the tool.
Electrolysis of iohexol, an iodinated X-ray contrast medium, on synthetic boron-doped diamond (BDD) thin film electrodes was investigated for the first time. Kinetic experiments of electrochemical ...oxidation resulted in complete elimination of iohexol. Data from the kinetic experiments were compared against estimates by the kinetic model proposed previously by Comninellis et al. Excellent agreement between the experimental results and the kinetic model was observed. The results suggest that electrolysis on BDD electrodes is a promising method for the elimination of iohexol from wastewater.
► We achieved elimination of persistent iohexol from water using BDD electrolysis. ► A model of COD evolution during electrolysis closely simulated experimental data. ► Transformation product formation depended on the applied current density.
We propose a methodology to measure the impact of congestion on accessibility at urban level using high-resolution population grid cells in combination with TomTom data on road congestion. The ...approach combines three accessibility indicators that can be calculated at different temporal and spatial levels of detail. The analysis of the impacts at fine resolution can reveal useful information as regards the segments of population to be affected by reduced accessibility.
We test the approach using the urban area of Seville as a case study. The methodology can be generalized and applied in most urban areas in Europe and globally, since it uses standardized data on spatial definition, traffic data and population distribution. It therefore permits the comparison of the level and evolution of accessibility across different urban areas.
Introduction
As well known, infrastructure endowment influences competitiveness of a region since the characteristics of a transport system in terms of capacity, connectivity, speeds, etc. determine ...the advantages/disadvantages of an area compared to other locations. This article attempts to investigate the potential impacts on rail accessibility across Europe when different possible operational enhancement scenarios are simulated.
Methods
The simulations are carried out by means of a combination of the TRANSTOOLS rail network and Traffic Analyst, the post-processing analyses are implemented in Matlab and the results for each zone (at NUTS3 level) are reported both in tabular form and in easy-to-read ArcGIS maps. Several accessibility measures are evaluated including two Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approaches aiming to construct a composite index for embracing all the complementary information provided by ‘partial’ accessibility sub-indicators; to better evaluate and understand the results either sensitivity and robustness analyses are performed for both the aggregate indicators.
Results
The outcomes provide insight into where major benefits in terms of accessibility can be expected; in particular the current infrastructure endowment already benefits many regions but improvements in speed could still increase significantly rail accessibility across Europe (mainly outside the core area as in Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, etc.). Furthermore both the proposed global indexes, although associating different ‘endogenous’ weights to the various sub-indicators, appear to be worthy and robust against uniform random noise.
Conclusions
Ultimately the results provide information useful for the prioritization of investment needs; moreover even if the interpretation of the partial accessibility indicators is clear and useful for policy-makers, the evaluation of a composite measure could allow planners not only to compare or fully rank the level of accessibility for different regions but even to control for eventual confusing and/or incomplete results that may appear when using only a partial approach.
This paper presents SHERPA-City, a web application to assess the potential of traffic measures to abate NO
air pollution in cities. The application is developed by the Joint Research Centre. It is ...freely available (https://integrated-assessment.jrc.ec.europa.eu) and allows the user to perform a fast screening of possible NO
abatement measures addressing traffic in European cities. SHERPA-City results depend on the quality of the default input data. It is therefore important to stress that the SHERPA-City default traffic flows, emission factors, fleet composition, road network topology, NO
pollution from other sources and meteorological data are based on EU-wide datasets that may not always represent perfectly a particular local situation. This is why the SHERPA-City allows the default data to be substituted by local data, to better reflect local features. This tool must be considered as a first step in exploring options to abate NO
air pollution through transport measures. The final decisions should be based, wherever possible, on full-scale modelling studies incorporating local knowledge.
In the transport sector, where change comes with inertia and investments are made with a long term perspective, decision makers need to consider how the future may look like in the very long term. ...The work presented in this paper is a scenario analysis focusing on the evolution of transport demand towards 2050, aiming to identify related challenges for European industrial and policy players. It follows up on the work of other recent attempts to study the future of transport from a European perspective, integrating findings from these studies, updating new trends and applying a specific scenario analysis methodology relying also on expert consultation. The diversity of the scenarios created unfolds aspects of the future transport system with rather different outcomes on issues like the volume of transport, travel motives, the prevalent spatial scales of transport and logistics, people’s preferences towards different transport attributes, the relevancy of the State versus the private initiative in transport production, the level of competition, or the relative importance of environment and resource scarcity in setting an agenda for innovation and regulations. Beyond the subsequent challenges and opportunities identified in this work, the scenarios developed may be a useful basis for individual actors of distinct backgrounds to build their own specific futures, supporting them in defining strategies for the future.
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