Analysis on the effect of the mobility of combustion vehicles in the environment of cities and the improvement in air pollution in Europe: A vision for the awareness of citizens and policy makers

[EN] Today, the design and remodeling of urban environments is being sought in order to achieve green, healthy, and sustainable cities. The effect of air pollution in cities due to vehicle combustion gases is an important part of the problem. Due to the indirect effect caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, political powers in Europe have imposed confinement measures for citizens by imposing movement restrictions in large cities. This indirect measure has given us a laboratory to show how the reduction in vehicle circulation affects in a short time the levels of air pollution in cities. Therefore, this article analyzes the effect in different European cities such as Milan, Prague, Madrid, Paris, and London. These cities have been chosen due to their large amount of daily road traffic that generates high levels of pollution; therefore, it can clearly show the fall in these pollutants in the air in the analyzed period. The results shown through this study indicate that the reduction in combustion vehicles greatly affects the levels of pollution in different cities. In these periods of confinement, there was an improvement in air quality where pollutant values dropped to 80% compared to the previous year. This should serve to raise awareness among citizens and political powers to adopt measures that induce sustainable transport systemsWe would like to give thanks to the materials technology institute (ITM) of Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, Spain for supporting this researchCárcel-Carrasco, J.; Pascual Guillamón, M.; Salas Vicente, F. (2021). Analysis on the effect of the mobility of combustion vehicles in the environment of cities and the improvement in air pollution in Europe: A vision for the awareness of citizens and policy makers. Land. 10(2):1-16. https://doi.org/10.3390/land10020184S11610

Urbanismo sostenible: un análisis introductorio de la relación entre la movilidad de los vehículos de combustión sobre la contaminación del aire en las ciudades

[ES] Hoy en día, se busca el diseño y remodelación de entornos urbanos para lograr ciudades verdes, saludables y sosteni- bles. El efecto de la contaminación del aire en las ciudades debido a los gases de combustión de los vehículos es una parte importante del problema. Debido al efecto indirecto causado por la pandemia de Covid-19, los poderes políti- cos en Europa han impuesto medidas de confinamiento para los ciudadanos imponiendo restricciones de movimiento en las grandes ciudades. Esta medida indirecta nos ha dado un terreno de experimentación para mostrar cómo la reducción de la circulación de vehículos tiene un efecto a corto plazo en los niveles de contaminación del aire en las ciudades. Por ello, este artículo analiza el efecto en Madrid. Esta ciudad ha sido elegida debido a su gran cantidad de tráfico rodado diario con altos niveles de contaminación; por lo tanto, la caída de la contaminación del aire se puede ver claramente en el período analizado. Los resultados mostrados a través de este estudio indican que la reducción de los vehículos de combustión afecta en gran medida a los niveles de contaminación en las diferentes ciudades. Du- rante el periodo de confinamiento, se ha experimentado una notable mejora de la calidad del aire donde los valores contaminantes bajaron hasta el 80% respecto al año anterior. Esto debería servir para concienciar a los ciudadanos y a los poderes políticos para adoptar medidas que induzcan el diseño de ciudades sostenibles.This work was supported by the European Union under the project Green Cities for Climate and Water Resilience, Sustainable Economic Growth, Healthy Citizens and Environments with reference 730283 and the framework of Condereff project (Ref. PGI05560-Condereff) Construction & demolition waste management policies for improved resource efficiency.Cárcel-Carrasco, J.; Martínez-Corral, A.; Aparicio Fernandez, CS.; Peñalvo-López, E. (2021). Urbanismo sostenible: un análisis introductorio de la relación entre la movilidad de los vehículos de combustión sobre la contaminación del aire en las ciudades. Área de Innovación y Desarrollo,S.L. 241-246. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/19066724124

Insight into the impact of COVID-19 on Australian transportation sector : an economic and community-based perspective

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a major virus outbreak of the 21st century. The Australian government and local authorities introduced some drastic strategies and policies to control the outspread of this virus. The policies related to lockdown, quarantine, social distancing, shut down of educational institute, work from home, and international and interstate travel bans significantly affect the lifestyle of citizens and, thus, influence their activity patterns. The transport system is, thus, severely affected due to the COVID-19 related restrictions. This paper analyses how the transport system is impacted because of the policies adopted by the Australian government for the containment of the COVID-19. Three main components of the transport sector are studied. These are air travel, public transport, and freight transport. Various official sources of data such as the official website of the Australian government, Google mobility trends, Apple Mobility trends, and Moovit were consulted along with recently published research articles on COVID-19 and its impacts. The secondary sources of data include databases, web articles, and interviews that were conducted with the stakeholders of transport sectors in Australia to analyse the relationship between COVID-19 prevention measures and the transport system. The results of this study showed reduced demand for transport with the adoption of COVID-19 prevention measures. Declines in revenues in the air, freight, and public transport sectors of the transport industry are also reported. The survey shows that transport sector in Australia is facing a serious financial downfall as the use of public transport has dropped by 80%, a 31.5% drop in revenues earned by International airlines in Australia has been predicted, and a 9.5% reduction in the freight transport by water is expected. The recovery of the transport sector to the pre-pandemic state is only possible with the relaxation of COVID-19 containment policies and financial support by the government

Extension of generalized additive models to graph-valued data with application to Covid-19 impacts on European air transportation

Die Entwicklung statistischer Methoden für Objekte mit geometrischer Struktur ermöglicht die Analyse komplexer Daten in dem zugrundeliegenden Raum. Graphen wertige Daten mit nicht gelabelten Knoten lassen sich mathematisch in einem nicht Euklidischen, metrischen Raum darstellen. Mithilfe dieser Darstellung wird ein lineares Regressionsmodell zu additiven und generalisierten additiven Regressionsmodellen für Graphen wertige Daten als Regressand erweitert. Außerdem werden Interpretationen und die Form der dazugehörigen Regressionsfunktionen untersucht. Abschließend wird ein generalisiertes additives Modell auf Teile des Europäischen Fluggastverkehrs während der Covid-19 Pandemie angewendet.The development of statistics for objects with geometric structure enables researchers to account appropriately for the space of complex data in their analysis. Graph-valued data with unlabeled vertices can be represented mathematically in a non-Euclidean, metric space. Utilizing this representation, an extension of a linear regression framework to an additive as well as generalized additive regression framework for graph-valued data as response is developed. Potential interpretations for and the form of the respective regression functions are studied. Moreover, the generalized additive framework is applied to an air passenger network of parts of the European Union during the Covid-19 pandemic

The impact of COVID-19 on flight networks

As COVID-19 transmissions spread worldwide, governments have announced and enforced travel restrictions to prevent further infections. Such restrictions have a direct effect on the volume of international flights among these countries, resulting in extensive social and economic costs. To better understand the situation in a quantitative manner, we analyzed the OpenSky Network data to clarify flight patterns and flight densities around the world. Then we observed relationships between flight numbers with new infection cases and the economy (the unemployment rate) in Barcelona. We found that the number of daily flights gradually decreased and then suddenly dropped 64% during the second half of March in 2020 after the United States and Europe enacted travel restrictions. We also observed a 51% decrease in the global flight network density decreased during this period. Regarding new COVID-19 cases, the United States had an unexpected surge regardless of travel restrictions. Finally, the layoffs for temporary workers in the tourism and airplane business increased by 4.3 fold in the weeks following Spain’s decision to close its borders.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version