Abstract
In the last years, there was great interest in the development of tools for an effective evaluation of road transport pollutant-related emissions, especially in the urban areas. This paper represents an innovative approach for identifying criticalities about pollutant emissions associated with road traffic and for defining effective policies in order to decrease pollutant emissions. The proposed tool concerns the development of an emission indicator, a proxy measure, which is useful for the assessment of emission problems, based on the use of GPS (Global Positioning System) instantaneous vehicle speed data. The tool can be considered an innovative and adequate solution in many cases in which the development of a valid and robust traffic simulation model, especially DTA (dynamic traffic assignment) is not available in the medium- and short-term horizon. The methodological process concerns the monitoring of road traffic conditions using GPS data from probe vehicles in combination with the use of GIS (Geographic Information System) for the estimation of an emission indicator. The tool has been tested on a real case study in the city of Cluj in Romania for the NOx emissions. The results show the utility of the tool in supporting policy and decision making, due to its ease of application and consistency, especially in defining critical areas.
Highlights
Transport-related emissions show a significant growth over the past decade and this trend is expected to continue on the long term
Smaller scale interventions in the urban area are already possible by implementing investments in clean infrastructure (Zhang et al, 2018) or traffic management
The proposed methodology develops an emission indicator, a proxy measure, based on GPS instantaneous speed data. This does not represent a tool for estimating pollutant emissions, which implies the computation of emissions based on the knowledge of the level of traffic, but rather an indicator of these emissions
Summary
Transport-related emissions show a significant growth over the past decade and this trend is expected to continue on the long term. In this respect, decarbonising the transport sector by eliminating fossil fuel could be a very effective policy on the long term. Urban areas are acknowledged to have the highest share in generating pollution related to transport and to face the most negative direct impact (Covrig et al, 2016; Roșu et al, 2018). Traffic emissions are included in the background air pollution. Their impact is very important (Alam et al, 2017; Banica et al, 2017; Condurat, 2016; Tongwane et al, 2015)
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