Potential of GPS-based smartphone application data for country-wide emission estimation

Author(s):  
Karol Szymankiewicz ◽  
Lech Gawuc ◽  
Marek Soliwoda

<p>Road transport emissions are among the primary causes of poor air quality in cities. Typically, activity data about road transport is based on point-wise automatic traffic measurements or traffic modelling environments like VISSUM. However, such methods do not provide complete spatial patterns of emissions that are needed for air quality modelling. On the other hand, modern smartphone applications, which are used by drivers to navigate and inform about road hazards, might provide a full spatial pattern of road traffic.</p><p>We will present preliminary results of road transport emission estimates based on the application of GPS-based smartphone data. The datasets describe average speed and number of users for every road part in Poland, including both major and minor roads. The data is based on the Open Street Maps road geometry and includes more than 4.5 million road segments describing 840 thousand km of roads.</p>

Atmosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 1372
Author(s):  
Felipe Cifuentes ◽  
Carlos M. González ◽  
Erika M. Trejos ◽  
Luis D. López ◽  
Francisco J. Sandoval ◽  
...  

Vehicular emissions are a predominant source of pollution in urban environments. However, inherent complexities of vehicular behavior are sources of uncertainties in emission inventories (EIs). We compare bottom-up and top-down approaches for estimating road transport EIs in Manizales, Colombia. The EIs were estimated using a COPERT model, and results from both approaches were also compared with the official top-down EI (estimated from IVE methodology). The transportation model PTV-VISUM was used for obtaining specific activity information (traffic volumes, vehicular speed) in bottom-up estimation. Results from COPERT showed lower emissions from the top-down approach than from the bottom-up approach, mainly for NMVOC (−28%), PM10 (−26%), and CO (−23%). Comparisons showed that COPERT estimated lower emissions than IVE, with higher differences than 40% for species such as PM10, NOX, and CH4. Furthermore, the WRF–Chem model was used to test the sensitivity of CO, O3, PM10, and PM2.5 predictions to the different EIs evaluated. All studied pollutants exhibited a strong sensitivity to the emission factors implemented in EIs. The COPERT/top-down was the EI that produced more significant errors. This work shows the importance of performing bottom-up EI to reduce the uncertainty regarding top-down activity data.


Atmosphere ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 695
Author(s):  
Marek Bogacki ◽  
Robert Oleniacz ◽  
Mateusz Rzeszutek ◽  
Paulina Bździuch ◽  
Adriana Szulecka ◽  
...  

One of the elements of strategy aimed at minimizing the impact of road transport on air quality is the introduction of its reorganization resulting in decreased pollutant emissions to the air. The aim of the study was to determine the optimal strategy of corrective actions in terms of the air pollutant emissions from road transport. The study presents the assessment results of the emission reduction degree of selected pollutants (PM10, PM2.5, and NOx) as well as the impact evaluation of this reduction on their concentrations in the air for adopted scenarios of the road management changes for one of the street canyons in Krakow (Southern Poland). Three scenarios under consideration of the city authorities were assessed: narrowing the cross-section of the street by eliminating one lane in both directions, limiting the maximum speed from 70 km/h to 50 km/h, and allowing only passenger and light commercial vehicles on the streets that meet the Euro 4 standard or higher. The best effects were obtained for the variant assuming banning of vehicles failing to meet the specified Euro standard. It would result in a decrease of the yearly averaged PM10 and PM2.5 concentrations by about 8–9% and for NOx by almost 30%.


Author(s):  
Thomas L. McCluskey ◽  
Mauro Vallati ◽  
Santiago Franco

The global growth in urbanisation increases the demand for services including road transport infrastructure, presenting challenges in terms of mobility. Optimising the exploitation of urban road network, while attempting to minimise the effects of traffic emissions, is a great challenge. SimplyfAI was a UK research council grant funded project which was aimed towards solving air quality problems caused by road traffic emissions. Large cities such as Manchester struggle to meet air quality limits as the range of available traffic management devices is limited. In the study, we investigated the application of linked data to enrich environmental and traffic data feeds, and we used this with automated planning tools to enable traffic to be managed at a region level. The management will have the aim of avoiding air pollution problems before they occur. This demo focuses on the planning component, and in particular the engineering and validation aspects, that were pivotal for the success of the project.


Atmosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 562
Author(s):  
Jorge Moreda-Piñeiro ◽  
Joel Sánchez-Piñero ◽  
María Fernández-Amado ◽  
Paula Costa-Tomé ◽  
Nuria Gallego-Fernández ◽  
...  

Due to the exponential growth of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in Spain (2020), the Spanish Government adopted lockdown measures as mitigating strategies to reduce the spread of the pandemic from 14 March. In this paper, we report the results of the change in air quality at two Atlantic Coastal European cities (Northwest Spain) during five lockdown weeks. The temporal evolution of gaseous (nitrogen oxides, comprising NOx, NO, and NO2; sulfur dioxide, SO2; carbon monoxide, CO; and ozone, O3) and particulate matter (PM10; PM2.5; and equivalent black carbon, eBC) pollutants were recorded before (7 February to 13 March 2020) and during the first five lockdown weeks (14 March to 20 April 2020) at seven air quality monitoring stations (urban background, traffic, and industrial) in the cities of A Coruña and Vigo. The influences of the backward trajectories and meteorological parameters on air pollutant concentrations were considered during the studied period. The temporal trends indicate that the concentrations of almost all species steadily decreased during the lockdown period with statistical significance, with respect to the pre-lockdown period. In this context, great reductions were observed for pollutants related mainly to fossil fuel combustion, road traffic, and shipping emissions (−38 to −78% for NO, −22 to −69% for NO2, −26 to −75% for NOx, −3 to −77% for SO2, −21% for CO, −25 to −49% for PM10, −10 to −38% for PM2.5, and −29 to −51% for eBC). Conversely, O3 concentrations increased from +5 to +16%. Finally, pollutant concentration data for 14 March to 20 April of 2020 were compared with those of the previous two years. The results show that the overall air pollutants levels were higher during 2018–2019 than during the lockdown period.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 496
Author(s):  
Xiaojian Hu ◽  
Nuo Chen ◽  
Nan Wu ◽  
Bicheng Yin

The Shanghai government has outlined plans for the new vehicles used for the public transportation, rental, sanitation, postal, and intra-city freight to be completely powered by electricity by 2020. This paper analyzed the characteristics of vehicle emissions in Shanghai in the past five years. The potential reduction in road traffic related emissions due to the promotion and application of electric vehicle in Shanghai was evaluated. The potential reduction was quantified by vehicular emissions. The vehicular emissions inventories are calculated by the COPERT IV model under the different scenarios, of which the results indicate that promoting electric vehicles is the efficient measure to control all road traffic related emissions and improve urban air quality. The results also provided basis and support for making policies to promote and manage electric vehicles.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 1217-1232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruno Vicente ◽  
Sandra Rafael ◽  
Vera Rodrigues ◽  
Hélder Relvas ◽  
Mariana Vilaça ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Olasunkanmi Oriola Akinyemi ◽  
Hezekiah O Adeyemi ◽  
Olusegun Jinadu

Abstract Analysis of road traffic accidents revealed that most accidents are as a result of drivers’ errors. Over the years, active safety systems (ASS) were devised in vehicle to reduce the high level of road accidents, caused by human errors, leading to death and injuries. This study however evaluated the impacts of ASS inclusions into vehicles in Nigeria road transportation network. The objectives was to measure how ASS contributed to making driving safer and enhanced transport safety. Road accident data were collected, for a period of eleven years, from Lagos State Ministry of Economic Planning and Budget, Central Office of Statistics. Quantitative analysis of the retrospective accident was conducted by computing the proportion of yearly number of vehicles involved in road accident to the total number of vehicles for each year. Results of the analysis showed that the proportion of vehicles involved in road accidents decreased from 16 in 1996 to 0.89 in 2006, the injured persons reduced from 15.58 in 1998 to 0.3 in 2006 and the death rate diminished from 4.45 in 1998 to 0.1 in 2006. These represented 94.4 %, 95 % and 95 % improvement respectively on road traffic safety. It can therefore be concluded that the inclusions of ASS into design of modern vehicles had improved road safety in Nigeria automotive industry.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (18) ◽  
pp. 13931-13971
Author(s):  
Volker Matthias ◽  
Markus Quante ◽  
Jan A. Arndt ◽  
Ronny Badeke ◽  
Lea Fink ◽  
...  

Abstract. The lockdown measures taken to prevent a rapid spreading of the coronavirus in Europe in spring 2020 led to large emission reductions, particularly in road traffic and aviation. Atmospheric concentrations of NO2 and PM2.5 were mostly reduced when compared to observations taken for the same time period in previous years; however, concentration reductions may not only be caused by emission reductions but also by specific weather situations. In order to identify the role of emission reductions and the meteorological situation for air quality improvements in central Europe, the meteorology chemistry transport model system COSMO-CLM/CMAQ was applied to Europe for the period 1 January to 30 June 2020. Emission data for 2020 were extrapolated from most recent reported emission data, and lockdown adjustment factors were computed from reported activity data changes, e.g. Google mobility reports. Meteorological factors were investigated through additional simulations with meteorological data from previous years. The results showed that lockdown effects varied significantly among countries and were most prominent for NO2 concentrations in urban areas with 2-week-average reductions up to 55 % in the second half of March. Ozone concentrations were less strongly influenced (up to ±15 %) and showed both increasing and decreasing concentrations due to lockdown measures. This depended strongly on the meteorological situation and on the NOx / VOC emission ratio. PM2.5 revealed 2 %–12 % reductions of 2-week-average concentrations in March and April, which is much less than a different weather situation could cause. Unusually low PM2.5 concentrations as observed in northern central Europe were only marginally caused by lockdown effects. The lockdown can be seen as a big experiment about air quality improvements that can be achieved through drastic traffic emission reductions. From this investigation, it can be concluded that NO2 concentrations can be largely reduced, but effects on annual average values are small when the measures last only a few weeks. Secondary pollutants like ozone and PM2.5 depend more strongly on weather conditions and show a limited response to emission changes in single sectors.


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