Lecture 8 - Emission Modelling
3 April 2023
Mozhgan Pourmoradnasseri, Ph.D.
The CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels represent the primary contribution of the transportation field.
Le Quéré, C., et.al. (2020). Temporary reduction in daily global CO2 emissions during the COVID-19 forced confinement. Nature climate change, 10(7), 647-653.
Air pollution generated by vehicle emissions has become increasingly evident, to the point that the temporary interruption of regular traffic during the COVID-19 lockdowns resulted in a tremendous decrease in CO2 emission.
Bilotta, S., & Nesi, P. (2022). Estimating CO2 Emissions from IoT Traffic Flow Sensors and Reconstruction. Sensors, 22(9), 3382.
Emission sensors
Traffic sensors
Böhm, M., Nanni, M., & Pappalardo, L. (2022). Gross polluters and vehicle emissions reduction. Nature Sustainability, 5(8), 699-707.
Now, whether we have the information about each vehicle's engine type or not, we can exploit this information together with a table with emissions functions to estimate the vehicles' instantaneous emissions at each point, with the module emissions
.
The method is applied to GPS tracks in three cities that are heterogeneous in their road networks:
The radius of gyration indicates the characteristic distance traveled by an individual.
The mobility entropy characterizes the predictability of their visitation patterns.
The total travel time of the vehicles is a principal factor governing emissions.
Van Fan, Y., Perry, S., Klemeš, J. J., & Lee, C. T. (2018). A review on air emissions assessment: Transportation. Journal of cleaner production, 194, 673-684.
Van Fan, Y., Perry, S., Klemeš, J. J., & Lee, C. T. (2018). A review on air emissions assessment: Transportation. Journal of cleaner production, 194, 673-684.
Air pollutants such as carbon monoxide (CO), contaminants (e.g. Pb), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), sulphur oxide (SOx) and nitrogen oxide (NOx) (EPA, 2016) have an instantaneous impact on the environment and human health.
Even having the identical place of departure and arrival, the distance/route traveled by truck, rail and ship are different. The contrasting results suggest the complexity of assessing the non-stationary source of emissions and challenges in defining a sustainable freight transport mode. The truck has a better performance in terms of PM10 and NOx, but the ship has lower CO2eq and SO2 emissions. This highlights the importance of simultaneous assessment of GHG and air pollutants for proper decision-making, as low GHG emissions do not represent low emissions for other pollutants.