The effect of short-term changes in air pollution on respiratory and cardiovascular morbidity in Nicosia, Cyprus.

Presented at the 6th International Conference on Urban Air Quality, Limassol, March, 2007. Short-paper was submitted for peer-review and appears in proceedings of the conference.This study investigates the effect of daily changes in levels of PM10 on the daily volume of respiratory and cardiovascular admissions in Nicosia, Cyprus during 1995-2004. After controlling for long- (year and month) and short-term (day of the week) patterns as well as the effect of weather in Generalized Additive Poisson models, some positive associations were observed with all-cause and cause-specific admissions. Risk of hospitalization increased stepwise across quartiles of days with increasing levels of PM10 by 1.3% (-0.3, 2.8), 4.9% (3.3, 6.6), 5.6% (3.9, 7.3) as compared to days with the lowest concentrations. For every 10μg/m3 increase in daily average PM10 concentration, there was a 1.2% (-0.1%, 2.4%) increase in cardiovascular admissions. With respects to respiratory admissions, an effect was observed only in the warm season with a 1.8% (-0.22, 3.85) increase in admissions per 10μg/m3 increase in PM10. The effect on respiratory admissions seemed to be much stronger in women and, surprisingly, restricted to people of adult age

Multi-model simulations of the impact of international shipping on Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate in 2000 and 2030

The global impact of shipping on atmospheric chemistry and radiative forcing, as well as the associated uncertainties, have been quantified using an ensemble of ten state-of-the-art atmospheric chemistry models and a predefined set of emission data. The analysis is performed for present-day conditions ( year 2000) and for two future ship emission scenarios. In one scenario ship emissions stabilize at 2000 levels; in the other ship emissions increase with a constant annual growth rate of 2.2% up to 2030 ( termed the "Constant Growth Scenario" (CGS)). Most other anthropogenic emissions follow the IPCC ( Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) SRES ( Special Report on Emission Scenarios) A2 scenario, while biomass burning and natural emissions remain at year 2000 levels. An intercomparison of the model results with observations over the Northern Hemisphere (25 degrees - 60 degrees N) oceanic regions in the lower troposphere showed that the models are capable to reproduce ozone (O-3) and nitrogen oxides (NOx= NO+ NO2) reasonably well, whereas sulphur dioxide (SO2) in the marine boundary layer is significantly underestimated. The most pronounced changes in annual mean tropospheric NO2 and sulphate columns are simulated over the Baltic and North Seas. Other significant changes occur over the North Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico and along the main shipping lane from Europe to Asia, across the Red and Arabian Seas. Maximum contributions from shipping to annual mean near-surface O-3 are found over the North Atlantic ( 5 - 6 ppbv in 2000; up to 8 ppbv in 2030). Ship contributions to tropospheric O3 columns over the North Atlantic and Indian Oceans reach 1 DU in 2000 and up to 1.8 DU in 2030. Tropospheric O-3 forcings due to shipping are 9.8 +/- 2.0 mW/m(2) in 2000 and 13.6 +/- 2.3 mW/m(2) in 2030. Whilst increasing O-3, ship NOx simultaneously enhances hydroxyl radicals over the remote ocean, reducing the global methane lifetime by 0.13 yr in 2000, and by up to 0.17 yr in 2030, introducing a negative radiative forcing. The models show future increases in NOx and O-3 burden which scale almost linearly with increases in NOx emission totals. Increasing emissions from shipping would significantly counteract the benefits derived from reducing SO2 emissions from all other anthropogenic sources under the A2 scenario over the continents, for example in Europe. Globally, shipping contributes 3% to increases in O-3 burden between 2000 and 2030, and 4.5% to increases in sulphate under A2/CGS. However, if future ground based emissions follow a more stringent scenario, the relative importance of ship emissions will increase. Inter-model differences in the simulated O-3 contributions from ships are significantly smaller than estimated uncertainties stemming from the ship emission inventory, mainly the ship emission totals, the distribution of the emissions over the globe, and the neglect of ship plume dispersion

The assessment of traffic livability, including local effects at home, during trips and at the destination, based on the individual activity pattern and trip behaviour

The environmental quality of the living environment is mainly linked to the direct and indirect impact of traffic in the neighborhood of the dwellings. In the Flemish mobility and urban planning, the term ‘livability’ is used focusing on the living conditions of people’s home location: what is the satisfaction about their living environment? The more specific term ‘traffic livability’ is used to describe the impact of all types of traffic on the livability of a dwelling location. Some methodologies were developed for an objective measurement of the traffic impact on quality of life. In Flanders the most commonly used methodologies are the ‘traffic livability index’ and the ‘bearing capacity’, which use a very narrow interpretation of the traffic livability, as they are highly based on the local road design (number of lanes, cycle path, …) and the local traffic characteristics (traffic flow, speed, traffic safety, …) of the street of the dwelling. The main critic is that these methods should measure over the complete living environment of a person, rather than just at the dwelling. For this reason, an alternative methodology was developed for an objective measurement of the impact of traffic on the local quality of the living environment. Compared to the current practice, this new methodology aims at the following objectives: • The evaluation is not done for the average person, but includes individual needs and travel patterns, based on personal characteristics, representing the large diversity of the mobility needs. • The methodology should reflect a daily activity pattern, including the traveled routes and destinations. The traffic livability of a specific household in a specific area will reflect the full extent of their needs at home, during the trips and at the destinations. • Traffic livability is measured by means of a broad set of indicators, representing different types of traffic impacts (accessibility, traffic noise, traffic emissions, …). The separate indicators are combined into an evaluation of the traffic livability, including an extensive set of secondary effects. This is mainly realized by a better simulation of the personal trip behavior, using the data from the Flemish Trip Behavior Survey. In order to evaluate the livability at a certain home location (a number of) households are sampled from this database, with the specific characteristics of the household (composition, car availability, children, …), the people in the household (age, employment, …) and their activities and trip pattern. With this information, the different indicators for traffic livability can be evaluated on the home location, as well as during the trip and at the destination

An Open-Source Microscopic Traffic Simulator

We present the interactive Java-based open-source traffic simulator available at www.traffic-simulation.de. In contrast to most closed-source commercial simulators, the focus is on investigating fundamental issues of traffic dynamics rather than simulating specific road networks. This includes testing theories for the spatiotemporal evolution of traffic jams, comparing and testing different microscopic traffic models, modeling the effects of driving styles and traffic rules on the efficiency and stability of traffic flow, and investigating novel ITS technologies such as adaptive cruise control, inter-vehicle and vehicle-infrastructure communication

New trends on urban goods movement: Modelling and simulation of e-commerce distribution

In this paper, a modelling framework to complete the recent scientific works on urban goods modelling is proposed. More precisely, we introduce a substitution procedure that estimates the number of trips and the corresponding travelled distances for shopping drive, home delivery and reception points' strategies. Moreover, an appraisal of scenarios is proposed in order to study how these three new forms of proximity delivery services impact on the overall urban goods movement distribution. Starting from four extreme situations, we introduce more realistic scenarios in order to find a suitable combination of delivery strategies. All the scenarios are simulated using the proposed framework, and the main traffic issues related to e-commerce distribution channel are discussed. The best realistic combination promotes the joint usage of home deliveries and proximity reception points and allows a reduction of about 13% of the road occupancy rates in urban areas.urban goods movement, modelling, shopping trips, e-commerce

Optimizing Urban Distribution Routes for Perishable Foods Considering Carbon Emission Reduction

The increasing demand for urban distribution increases the number of transportation vehicles which intensifies the congestion of urban traffic and leads to a lot of carbon emissions. This paper focuses on carbon emission reduction in urban distribution, taking perishable foods as the object. It carries out optimization analysis of urban distribution routes to explore the impact of low carbon policy on urban distribution routes planning. On the base of analysis of the cost components and corresponding constraints of urban distribution, two optimization models of urban distribution route with and without carbon emissions cost are constructed, and fuel quantity related to cost and carbon emissions in the model is calculated based on traffic speed, vehicle fuel quantity and passable time period of distribution. Then an improved algorithm which combines genetic algorithm and tabu search algorithm is designed to solve models. Moreover, an analysis of the influence of carbon tax price is also carried out. It is concluded that in the process of urban distribution based on the actual network information, the path optimization considering the low carbon factor can effectively reduce the distribution process of CO2, and reduce the total cost of the enterprise and society, thus achieving greater social benefits at a lower cost. In addition, the government can encourage low-carbon distribution by rationally adjusting the price of carbon tax to achieve a higher social benefit