Rethinking the waterfront of Barcelona in the 21st century: climate risk and post-pandemic scenarios

La regeneración urbana del frente marítimo de Barcelona representa una de las más buenas prácticas de integración puerto-ciudad. La ciudad ha conseguido, sobre todo gracias a los Juegos Olímpicos de 1992, cambiar su imagen, convirtiéndose en uno de los destinos más apreciados a nivel internacional. La contribución propone reflexionar sobre el “modelo Barcelona” y sobre los temas críticos de una ciudad global, plagada de turismo y en proceso de gentrificación. En particular, centrándose en la zona del Moll de la Fusta en el Port Vell, analizando brevemente los pasos que condujeron a uno de los mejores ejemplos de recuperación e integración de waterfronts urbanos, se propone repensar el frente marítimo y el tejido urbano en un escenario más amplio de crisis climática y de los límites de la metrópolis contemporánea evidenciados por la pandemia del Covid-19. Se propone la creación de nuevos espacios públicos al servicio de ciudadanos y turistas mediante una operación de greening para interconectar los grandes espacios verdes de la ciudad contribuyendo a la mitigación y a la adaptación climática, a la gestión de riesgo climáticos y a la resiliencia urbana.The urban regeneration of Barcelona’s waterfront represents one of the best practices of port-city integration. The city has succeeded, especially thanks to the 1992 Olympic Games, in changing its image, becoming one of the most appreciated destinations at international level. The contribution proposes to reflect on the “Barcelona model” and on the critical issues of a global city, plagued by tourism and in the process of gentrification. In particular, focusing on the Moll de la Fusta area in the Port Vell, briefly analysing the steps that led to one of the best examples of recovery and integration of urban waterfronts, it proposes to rethink the waterfront and the urban tissue in a larger scenario of climate crisis and of the limits of the contemporary metropolis evidenced by the Covid-19 pandemic. It proposes the creation of new public spaces to serve citizens and tourists through a greening operation to interconnect the city’s large green spaces, contributing to climate mitigation, adaptation, risk management and urban resilience.La presente contribución es fruto de avances aun trabajo de tesis en Arquitectura conseguida en el Departamento de Arquitectura de la Universidad Federico II de Nápoles y presentada en la conferencia “Forma Urbis y Territorios Metropolitanos” a Barcelona en septiembre de 2020.Peer Reviewe

Challenges of Electrifying Medium and Heavy Duty Vehicles in California and How These Challenges Can Be Overcome

California is electrifying medium and heavy vehicles (vehicles weighing over 8,500 pounds) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide environmental justice for disadvantaged communities. These vehicles are used for delivery, construction, refuse collection or long haul trucking. The three main challenges of electrification are infrastructure, policy and funding. To address these challenges, policy analysis was used to review California’s policies already in place for electrification of medium and heavy duty vehicles. Comparative analysis was used to look at policies in other countries and environmental programs for strategies to help electrification efforts. California faces a lack of infrastructure of medium and heavy duty electric vehicle chargers and high upfront costs. These costs can be decreased per vehicle with a larger volume of electric vehicles. California has many policies to help support adoption of medium and heavy duty electric vehicles, however they can be expanded by looking China’s program starting electrification in specific cities, Oslo, Norway’s involvement of local government and the state’s solar rollout for a market pull strategy. California has various funding opportunities but more sustained funding is needed to overcome the $195.06 billion funding deficit. To tackle challenges faced by electrification of medium and heavy vehicles in California, policy and funding can be coupled to support each other through mandates and partnerships. Emphasis can be placed on infrastructure and initiatives supporting disadvantaged communities. California can start electrification with delivery vehicles because they have the lowest infrastructure costs and provide opportunities for emission reductions and environmental justice across California

Development of a model for assessing Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions from terminal and drayage operations

Within a seaport terminal, the main sources of emissions include (1) building use and maintenance, (2) ocean-going vessels and harbour crafts, (3) cargo handling equipment and (4) heavy-duty vehicles (HDV) used for the transportation of the containers (which considered to be one of the most polluting elements of port operations). The main objective of this work was the development of a mathematical model for the quantification of Greenhouse Gas emissions produced by HDV during container transport in ports. Several models and tools have been developed for this purpose; however most of them utilize an over-simplified fuel and energy consumption-based approach. Firstly, a critical review of emissions calculations models was performed, and following the results of this analysis COPERT was chosen to be used as a basis for modeling the fleet in port operation. The next step was to analyse in depth COPERT’s methodology and equations in order to identify potential limitations. The following step was to evaluate and address those limitations by introducing new elements and factors (e.g. emissions from stop-and-go traffic, idling, emissions increase due to air conditioning operation etc.). The final step was the modification of COPERT’s equation and the development of the improved model. © 2016, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

Analysis and Optimization of Chassis Movements in Transportation Networks with Centralized Chassis Processing Facilities

This work studies the concept of “Centralized Processing of Chassis,” and its potential impact on port drayage efficiency. The concept revolves around an off-dock terminal (or several off-dock terminals), referred to as Chassis Processing Facilities (CPFs). A CPF is located close to the port, where trucks will go to exchange chassis, thereby reducing traffic at the marine terminals and resulting in reduced travel times and reduced congestion. This work is divided into two major studies: one at the strategic planning level, and one at the operational level for individual trucking companies. In the first study, an analytical framework for modeling and optimization of chassis movements in transportation networks with CPFs is developed, and a case study in the Long Beach/Los Angeles (LB/LA) port area is performed. Comparisons between current practices at ports, in which chassis exchanges occur at marine terminals, and proposed practices, in which the exchanges happen at CPFs, are performed. The results of this study indicate that a reduction of total travel time by up to 20% can be achieved when using the CPFs. The study also shows that, in the LB/LA port area, the return on investment for establishing additional CPF locations decreases sharply for any more than three CPFs. Overall, the findings indicate that travel time can be significantly reduced through implementation of CPFs which has important implications in reducing negative environmental impacts of the port as well as operational costs for trucking companies. In the second study, scheduling of chassis and container movements is optimized at the operational level for individual trucking companies, when CPFs are available for use within a major metropolitan area. A multi-objective optimization problem is formulated in which the weighted combination of the total travel time for the schedules of all vehicles in the company fleet and the maximum work span across all vehicle drivers during the day is minimized. Time-varying dynamic models for the movements of chassis and containers are developed and used in the optimization process. The optimal solution is obtained through a genetic algorithm, and the effectiveness of the developed methodology is evaluated through a case study which once again focuses on the LB/LA port area. The case study uses a trucking company located in the Los Angeles region, which can utilize three candidate CPFs for exchange of chassis. The company assigns container movement tasks to its fleet of trucks, with warehouse locations spread across the region. In the simulation scenarios developed for the case study, the use of CPFs at the trucking company level, can provide improvements up to 30% (depending upon the specific scenario) over the cases not using any CPFs. It is found in this work that for typical cases where the number of jobs is much larger than the number of vehicles in the company fleet, the greatest benefit from CPF use would be in the cases where there are some significant job-to-job differences with respect to chassis usage and type. Lastly, in addition to the formulation and optimization for initially planning daily activities, the study further models the problem in a dynamic environment, in which traffic network parameters can change drastically from initial daily predictions. In order to perform the optimization in a dynamic formulation with varying noise levels, a method by which noise could be injected into the initial daily predictions is developed to support the model inputs for the case study and an incremental optimization approach is implemented. Results indicate that a modest potential benefit of approximately 2% may be expected if dynamic re-routing is performed. However, in practice it will be important to weigh the cost of the additional real-time queries required to enable the dynamic re-routing against the potential benefits for the specific company and job set in question prior to implementation