Report on how EIONET and EEA can contribute to the urban in situ requirements of a future Copernicus anthropogenic CO2 observing system

This report provides a technical review of CO2 and CH4 emissions monitoring methods based on surface mixing ratio measurements, total column mixing ratio measurements and flux measurements. The review demonstrated that all these measurements would fulfil respective in situ requirements of the Copernicus CO2 MVS capacity, contributing to the validation of space observations in and around cities and/or the system’s city-scale emissions estimates. The review furthermore elaborated on the benefits to climate change mitigation monitoring in the respective cities and how these methods could be implemented to monitor local emissions.Negotiated procedure No EEA/IDM/R0/17/008. Services supporting the European Environment Agency’s (EEA) crosscutting coordination of the Copernicus In Situ Componen

Hidden Markov Models

Hidden Markov Models (HMMs), although known for decades, have made a big career nowadays and are still in state of development. This book presents theoretical issues and a variety of HMMs applications in speech recognition and synthesis, medicine, neurosciences, computational biology, bioinformatics, seismology, environment protection and engineering. I hope that the reader will find this book useful and helpful for their own research

Unifying Consensus and Covariance Intersection for Efficient Distributed State Estimation over Unreliable Networks

This thesis studies the problem of recursive distributed state estimation over unreliable networks. The main contribution is to fuse the independent and dependent information separately. Local estimators communicate directly only with their immediate neighbors and nothing is assumed about the structure of the communication network, specifically it need not be connected at all times. The proposed estimator is a Hybrid one that fuses independent and dependent (or correlated) information using a distributed averaging and iterative conservative fusion rule respectively. It will be discussed how the hybrid method can improve estimators's performance and make it robust to network failures. The content of the thesis is divided in two main parts. In the first part I study how this idea is applied to the case of dynamical systems with continuous state and Gaussian noise. I establish bounds for estimation performance and show that my method produces unbiased conservative estimates that are better than Iterative Covariance Intersection (ICI). I will test the proposed algorithm on an atmospheric dispersion problem, a random linear system estimation and finally a target tracking problem. In the second part, I will discuss how the hybrid method can be applied to distributed estimation on a Hidden Markov Model. I will discuss the notion of conservativeness for general probability distributions and use the appropriate cost function to achieve improvement similar to the first part. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated in a multi-agent tracking problem and a high dimensional HMM and it is shown that its performance surpasses the competing algorithms

A Strategy for a Global Observing System for Verification of National Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Abstract and PDF report are also available on the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change website (http://globalchange.mit.edu/).With the risks of climate change becoming increasingly evident, there is growing discussion regarding international treaties and national regulations to lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Enforcement of such agreements is likely to depend formally upon national and sectoral emission reporting procedures (sometimes referred to as “bottom-up” methods). However, for these procedures to be credible and effective, it is essential that these reports or claims be independently verified. In particular, any disagreements between these “bottom-up” emission estimates, and independent emission estimates inferred from global GHG measurements (so-called “top-down” methods) need to be resolved. Because emissions control legislation is national or regional in nature, not global, it is also essential that “top-down” emission estimates be determined at these same geographic scales. This report lays out a strategy for quantifying and reducing uncertainties in greenhouse gas emissions, based on a comprehensive synthesis of global observations of various types with models of the global cycles of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that include both the natural and human influences on these cycles. The overall goal is to establish a global observing and estimation system that incorporates all relevant available knowledge (physical, biogeochemical, technological and economic) in order to verify greenhouse gas emissions, as a key component of any global GHG treaty.Lockheed Martin Corporation and the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, which is funded by a consortium of government, industry and foundation sponsors

Energy Management

Forecasts point to a huge increase in energy demand over the next 25 years, with a direct and immediate impact on the exhaustion of fossil fuels, the increase in pollution levels and the global warming that will have significant consequences for all sectors of society. Irrespective of the likelihood of these predictions or what researchers in different scientific disciplines may believe or publicly say about how critical the energy situation may be on a world level, it is without doubt one of the great debates that has stirred up public interest in modern times. We should probably already be thinking about the design of a worldwide strategic plan for energy management across the planet. It would include measures to raise awareness, educate the different actors involved, develop policies, provide resources, prioritise actions and establish contingency plans. This process is complex and depends on political, social, economic and technological factors that are hard to take into account simultaneously. Then, before such a plan is formulated, studies such as those described in this book can serve to illustrate what Information and Communication Technologies have to offer in this sphere and, with luck, to create a reference to encourage investigators in the pursuit of new and better solutions

Proceedings of Abstracts 10th International Conference on Air Quality Science and Application

This 10th International Conference in Air Quality - Science and Application is being held in the elegant and vibrant city of Milan, Italy. Our local hosts are ARIANET and ARPA Lombardia both of whom play a leading role in assessing and managing air pollution in the area. The meeting builds upon the series that began at the University of Hertfordshire, UK in July 1996. Subsequent meetings have been held at the Technical University of Madrid, Spain (1999), Loutraki, Greece (2001), Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic (2003), Valencia, Spain (2005), Cyprus (2007), Istanbul, Turkey (2009) Athens, Greece (2012) and Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany (2014). Over the last two decades controls to limit air pollution have increased but the problem of poor air quality persists in all cities of the world. Consequently, the issue of the quality of air that we breathe remains at the forefront of societal concerns and continues to demand the attention of scientists and policy makers to reduce health impacts and to achieve sustainable development. Although urbanisation is growing in terms of population, transport, energy consumption and utilities, science has shown that impact from air pollution in cities is not restricted to local scales but depends on contributions from regional and global scales including interactions with climate change. Despite improvements in technology, users still demand robust management and assessment tools to formulate effective control policies and strategies for reducing the health impact of air pollution. The topics of papers presented at the conference reflect the diversity of scales, processes and interactions affecting air pollution and its impact on health and the environment. As usual, the conference is stimulating cross-fertilisation of ideas and cooperation between the different air pollution science and user communities. In particular, there is greater involvement of city, regional and global air pollution, climate change, users and health communities at the meeting. This international conference brings together scientists, users and policy makers from across the globe to discuss the latest scientific advances in our understanding of air pollution and its impacts on our health and environment. In addition to the scientific advances, the conference will also seek to highlight applications and developments in management strategies and assessment tools for policy and decision makers. This volume presents a collection of abstracts of papers presented at the Conference. The main themes covered in the Conference include: Air quality and impact on regional to global scales Development/application/evaluation of air quality and related models Environmental and health impact resulting from air pollution Measurement of air pollutants and process studies Source apportionment and emission models/inventories Urban meteorology Special session: Air quality impacts of the increasing use of biomass fuels Special session: Air quality management for policy support and decisions Special session: Air pollution meteorology from local to global scales Special session: Climate change and human health Special Session: Modelling and measuring non-exhaust emissions from traffic Special session: Transport related air pollution - PM and its impact on cities and across EuropeFinal Published versio