Evaluation of ecodriving performances and teaching method: comparing training and simple advice

Eco-driving style is widely known to induce up to 20% fuel consumption reduction, but little is known about differences due to different learning methods. In order to evaluate the potential impacts of future ecological driving assistance system (EDAS) in comparison with usual techniques, a statistical approach is proposed. Two kinds of experiments are analysed in this paper: In the first one, simple advice were given to the participants, while in the second one, full courses with eco-driving experts were used. Performance indicators were derived from five commonly referred golden rules of eco-driving and used as model inputs. Different kind of statistical models are discussed, among which we choose to apply the ordinary logistic regression to assess the effects of each driving advice separately Results show that ecodriving advices are better applied after a course than just providing tips. The approach is then extended to build a generic model that can be used both to characterize and evaluate eco-driving style

Measuring Eco-efficiency of Production: A Frontier Approach

Eco-efficiency of production is an important concept both from the viewpoint of society and business community; but as yet, there is no unambiguous way to its measurement. The purpose of this paper is to present a general measurement framework based on production theory and the activity analysis approach. Although we exploit the existing methods and techniques, our approach diverges essentially from the usual treatments of the environmental performance of firms in the productive efficiency analysis. The main difference between our approach and the earlier studies is that we build on the definition of eco-efficiency as the ratio of economic value added to the environmental damage index. Related to this orientation, we also approach eco-efficiency from a more aggregate perspective. Our general framework is illustrated by an empirical application to the evaluation of eco-efficiency of road transportation in Finland.Eco-efficiency, Environmental Pressures, Aggregation, Benefit of the Doubt Weighting, Distance Function, Activity Analysis, Data Envelopment Analysis, Road transportation

Sustainable Development Indicator Frameworks and Initiatives

Agricultural and Food Policy, Environmental Economics and Policy, Farm Management, Production Economics,

Characterization of drivers heterogeneity and its integration within traffic simulation

Drivers heterogeneity and the broad range of vehicle characteristics are considered primarily responsible for the stochasticity observed in road traffic dynamics. Assessing the differences in driving style and incorporating individual driving behaviour in microsimulation has attracted significant attention lately. The first topic is studied extensively in the literature. The second one, on the contrary, remains an open issue. The present study proposes a methodology to characterise driving style in the free-flow regime and to incorporate drivers heterogeneity within a microsimulation framework. The methodology uses explicit and simplified modelling of the vehicle powertrain to separate the drivers behavior from the vehicle characteristics. Results show that inter and intra-driver heterogeneity can be captured by log-normal distributions of well-designed metric.Drivers are classified into three different groups (dynamic, ordinary and timid drivers)

D41.1 : Performance Indicators and ecoDriver Test Design

This deliverable details the proposed assessment approaches and the design of field trials for data provision. Research questions and objectives of the project were divided into three major themes: user acceptance, behaviour, as well as energy use and emissions, which led to the formation of 24 hypotheses in total. A large number of Performance Indicators were identified, which will be used to validate the hypotheses. These Performance Indicators were grouped into 16 categories, covering the aforementioned three research themes. To provide empirical data for validating the hypotheses and answering the research questions, a series of field trials will betaken place in SP3. There are 12 fleets of vehicles, across 7 countries and covering a wide range of vehicle types. This deliverable outlines experimental design of the field trials, including fleet specifications, participant recruitment, route selection, test procedures, and data collection protocol etc. There are similarities but also individual characteristics of these experimental designs across the fleets and test sites, in order to produce all necessary data for addressing the research question

Consumer Footprint. Basket of Products indicator on Mobility

The EU Consumer Footprint aims at assessing the environmental impacts of consumption. The methodology for assessing the impacts is based on the life cycle assessment (LCA) of products (or services) purchased and used in one year by an EU citizen. This report is about the subset indicator of the consumer footprint of the basket of product (BoP) on mobility. The baseline model of the BoP mobility is built using statistics about European fleet composition and intensity of use of transport means by European citizens, i.e. the number of kilometers travelled by road, rail and air transport. These data are then allocated to 27 representative products, including 16 types of passenger cars, 3 types of 2-wheelers, 3 types of bus transport, 2 types of rail transport and 3 types of air transport. The resulting baseline inventory model, referring to the year 2010, has been assessed for 15 different impact categories, using the ILCD life cycle impact assessment method. A sensitivity analysis has been run for some impact categories, with a selection of recent impact assessment models and factors. Results allows a wide array of considerations, as this study reports overall impact in Europe due to mobility, average impact per citizen, share of impact due to each transport mode and type of vehicle. The results highlight that road transport is by far the mode of transport contributing the most to the impact of EU citizens’ mobility. Within this macro-category, the product groups that can be considered hotspots for the European mobility are passenger cars, and especially diesel cars. In terms of impact categories, resource depletion is the most important one, especially for road transport (due to the materials used to build the vehicles and the fossil fuels used in the use stage). The contribution of life cycle stages to the overall impact of the BoP mobility varies among impact categories: vehicle usage, fuel production and vehicle production are the most relevant stages for almost all the impact categories considered. To assess potential benefits stemming from selected ecoinnovations applied to the mobility sector, the Consumer Footprint BoP mobility baseline has been assessed against five scenarios. The scenarios developed for the BoP mobility regard the use of eco-driving measures (including technical and behavioural changes), an increased use of biofuels in substitution of the current blend of diesel, and the evolution of hybrid and electric mobility (as the share of hybrid and electric vehicles in the European fleet and of the expected increase in efficiency of the batteries). In addition, one scenario is directly related to changes in the lifestyle of European citizens, namely the shift of a portion of their mobility habits from private cars to public transport, for what concern the mobility in urban areas. The amount of km travelled yearly by European citizens plays a relevant role in the assessment of the scenarios representing possible improvement options for the sector. Indeed, the number of person*km (pkm) travelled yearly by an average European citizen is constantly growing over time. This is reflected in the larger impact (over all the impact categories considered) of the baseline for the reference year 2015 over the baseline 2010 and of scenario 1 (expected situation in 2030) over the baselines 2015 and 2010. The increase of the pkm travelled offsets the reduction of the impact per km travelled achieved through the introduction of cars compliant to the new emission standards (Euro 6) and through the increase of electric and hybrid vehicles. The expected improvements related to electric and hybrid cars, and especially on the batteries, could lead to a reduction of the impact of these type of vehicles up to 40% (e.g. impact of improved electrical vehicle on freshwater eutrophication, compared to the current performance of electrical vehicle). However, the relevance of these improvements on the overall impact of the BoP (i.e. of the mobility of EU citizens) is strongly dependent on the share of vehicles in the fleet. In general, the impact reduction expected from the single solutions tested in the scenarios has a limited effect on the overall impact of the BoP (i.e. of the consumption area of mobility) if they are considered one by one and it is the combination of several measures that may help to maximize the benefits. Specifically for the mobility sector, a reduction of the total kms travelled by road, rail or air means of transport (e.g. by increasing the kms travelled by bicycle or by walking, when possible), is needed, to avoid that the reduction of impact achieved through technological improvements is offset by the continuous increase in the amount of pkm over time.JRC.D.1-Bio-econom

Driving Volatility in Instantaneous Driving Behaviors: Studies Using Large-Scale Trajectory Data

Increasing amounts of data, generated by electronic sensors from various sources that include travelers, vehicles, infrastructure and the environment, referred to as “Big Data”, represent an opportunity for innovation in transportation systems and toward achieving safety, mobility and sustainability goals. The dissertation takes advantage of large-scale trajectory data coupled with travel behavioral information and containing 78 million second-by-second driving records from 100 thousand trips made by nearly four thousand drivers. The data covers 70 counties across the State of California and Georgia, representing various land use types, roadway network conditions and population. The trajectories cover various driving practices made by vehicles of varied body types as well as different fuel types including conventional vehicles (CVs) consuming gasoline, hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), battery electric vehicles (BEVs), diesel vehicles and other alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs). The dissertation establishes a framework for the research agenda in instantaneous driving behavior studies using the large-scale trajectory data. The dissertation makes both theoretical and empirical contributions: 1) Developing measures for driving volatility in instantaneous driving behaviors; 2) Understanding correlates of driving volatility in hierarchies & developing applications using large-scale trajectory data. Before using second-by-second trajectories, a study, answering research questions concerning the relationships between data sampling rates and information loss, was conducted. Then, a study for quantifying driving volatility in instantaneous driving behaviors was presented. “Driving volatility”, as the core concept in the dissertation, captures extreme driving patterns under seemingly normal conditions. After that, the dissertation presents a study on exploration of the hierarchical nature of driving volatility embedded in travel survey data using multi-level modeling techniques, and highlights the role of AFVs in travel. Last, the dissertation presents a study for customizing driving cycles for individuals using large-scale trajectory data, given heterogeneous driving performance across drivers and vehicle types. The customized driving cycles help generate more accurate fuel economy information to support cost-effective vehicle choices. The implications of the findings and potential applications to fleet vehicles and driving population are also discussed in the dissertation

Sustainable and healthy diets: trade-offs and synergies : final scientific report

This project aimed at analysing trade-offs and synergies between healthy nutrition and sustainable food systems. First, we identified nutritional patters of the Swiss population based on representative consumption data. The health impacts of these nutritional patterns were then analysed based on a review of the scientific literature on health impacts of food commodities and diets and by calculating the Alternate Healthy Eating Index (AHEI), the Mediterranean Diet Score (MDS) and Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) of the nutritional patterns. Second, we comprehensively analysed health, environmental, social and economic impacts and related trade-offs and synergies for a number of future scenarios of Swiss agricultural production and food consumption. For this, we used a modelling approach, linking three different models: a global mass flow model, a system dynamics model and an environmentally extended input-output model. We modelled ten different scenarios for the Swiss Food Sector in 2050. These scenarios were either developed in a participatory process during a series of interviews and group discussions with different groups of stakeholders or optimised environmental impacts while at the same time complying with different nutritional and agronomic restrictions. Three main scenarios were analysed with all three models in detail. Among these main scenarios was the SwissFoodPyramid2050 Scenario, which assumes a widespread implementation of the nutritional recommendations according to the Swiss Food Pyramid. The FeedNoFood2050 Scenario assumes an improved use of agricultural land by feeding only grass and by-products to livestock, which was not competing with direct human nutrition, i.e. did not require arable land (neither in Switzerland nor abroad). The third scenario was a reference scenario, which assumes no changes in diets until 2050 and which was used to compare the two alternative scenarios. The other scenarios were targeted at specific questions such as minimizing greenhouse gases. Our results illustrate two visions of how healthy diets and sustainable food systems could look like. Both the SwissFoodPyramid2050 and the FeedNoFood2005 scenarios would require similar dietary changes, such as a reduction of meat consumption and an increase of consumption of pulses. However, there are also fundamental differences between the diets in the two alternative scenarios, e.g. regarding the type of meat consumed. These differences can be interpreted as trade-offs which result from agronomic boundary conditions such as the coupled production of milk and meat, the availability of natural resources, such as grassland and co-products of food processing and health aspects of Swiss diets. Of primary importance in this respect was the use of permanent grasslands and the co-production of veal and beef with dairy production due to environmental reasons and reasons for optimally utilizing available resources. This means, if permanent grassland should be maintained as an ecosystem, dairy production would provide the basis for animal proteins. Thus, while in the FeedNoFood2050 Scenario veal and rather low-quality beef from dairy cows is consumed instead of meat from monogastrics, the SwissFoodPyramid2050 Scenario would result in a higher amount of meat from monogastrics. Our results imply that there is a lack of a comprehensive food systems view in the current discussion on healthy and sustainable diets. Stronger coherence between health, food and agricultural policy is needed to account for systemic boundary conditions and thus to allow for minimising trade-offs and maximise synergies. Current agricultural policies fail to address the health perspective. Financial support for meat and sugar producers, which lead to lower prices for those products and ultimately to a higher consumption than without these policies, are two obvious examples. Yet, comprehensive visions such as the SwissFoodPyramid scenario, the FeedNoFood Scenario or optimised scenarios would require an even more complex policy mix of incentives, regulations and information campaigns. This would probably need an adaptation of the current institutional setting and division of competences between the Federal Offices for Agriculture (FOAG) and for the Environment (FOEN), the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) and the Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office (FSVO). A commonly shared vision, including specific goals with respect to how the Swiss food system should look like, is urgently needed. Developing such a vision needs to involve all operators and stakeholders of the food system, as our results imply that more sustainable and healthy diets do not necessarily go along with financial benefits of both producers and consumers. These trade-offs and the knowledge of behavioural economics need to be considered for designing settings which create mutual benefits for operators in the food sector. For instance, neither the majority of consumers, food industry nor agricultural producers can be expected to respond altruistically as an entire sector in the long term. Therefore, policy needs to set financial incentives for internalising environmental and social externalities in order to push and pull the food system towards sustainability. Furthermore, it is crucial to account for agronomic boundary conditions and systemic aspects, such as the role of ruminants in utilizing grasslands and the unavoidable link of milk and meat production