Ressenyes

Index de les obres ressenyades: Gavin MENZIES, 1421. El año en que China descubrió el Mund

Data fusion uncertainty-enabled methods to map street-scale hourly NO2 in Barcelona: a case study with CALIOPE-Urban v1.0

Comprehensive monitoring of NO2 exceedances is imperative for protecting human health, especially in urban areas with traffic. However, an accurate spatial characterization of the exceedances is challenging due to the typically low density of air quality monitoring stations and the inherent uncertainties in urban air quality models. We study how observational data from different sources and timescales can be combined with a dispersion air quality model to obtain bias-corrected NO2 hourly maps at the street scale. We present a kriging-based data fusion workflow that merges dispersion model output with continuous hourly observations and uses a machine-learning-based land use regression (LUR) model constrained with past short intensive passive dosimeter campaign measurements. While the hourly observations allow the bias adjustment of the temporal variability in the dispersion model, the microscale LUR model adds information on the NO2 spatial patterns. Our method includes an uncertainty calculation based on the estimated error variance of the universal kriging technique, which is subsequently used to produce urban maps of probability of exceeding the 200 µg m−3 hourly and the 40 µg m−3 annual NO2 average limits. We assess the statistical performance of this approach in the city of Barcelona for the year 2019. Our results show that simply merging the monitoring stations with the model output already significantly increases the correlation coefficient (r) by +29 % and decreases the root mean square error (RMSE) by −32 %. When adding the time-invariant microscale LUR model in the data fusion workflow, the improvement is even more remarkable, with +46 % and −48 % for the r and RMSE, respectively. Our work highlights the usefulness of high-resolution spatial information in data fusion methods to better estimate exceedances at the street scale.We have received support from the Barcelona City Council through the UncertAIR project (ID 22S09501-001; Recerca Jove i emergent 2022). This research has been supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación through the BROWNING project (grant no. RTI2018-099894-BI00), the Agencia Estatal de Investigación as part of the VITALISE project (grant no. PID2019-108086RA-I00) and the MITIGATE project (grant no. PID2020-116324RA695 I00), the H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (grant no. H2020-MSCA-COFUND-2016-754433), the AXA Research Fund, and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (grant nos. RES-AECT-2021-1-0027 and RES-AECT-2021-2-0001).Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

To what extent the traffic restriction policies applied in Barcelona city can improve its air quality?

Barcelona city (Spain) is applying a series of traffic restriction measures that aim at renewing and reducing the amount of circulating vehicles to improve air quality. The measures include changes in the built environment to reduce private vehicle space in specific areas through the so-called “superblocks” and tactical urban planning actions, along with the implementation of a city-wide Low Emission Zone (LEZ) that restricts the entry of the most polluting vehicles to the city. Our study quantifies the impact of these measures in the greater area of Barcelona combining a coupled macroscopic traffic and pollutant emission model with a multi-scale air quality model. Our modelling system allows estimating the effect of different traffic restrictions upon traffic and the associated emissions and air quality levels at a very high resolution (20 m). The measures were evaluated both individually and collectively to assess both their relative and overall impact upon emissions and air quality. We show that in the absence of traffic demand reductions, the application of isolated measures that reduce private vehicle space, either through superblocks or tactical urban planning, have no overall emission impacts; only localized street-level NOx positive and negative changes (±17%) are found due to traffic re-routing and the generation of new bottlenecks. It is only when these measures are combined with optimistic fleet renewal as a result of the LEZ implementation and demand reductions, that relevant global emission reductions in NOx are obtained (-13% and -30%, respectively) with estimated NO2 reductions of -36% and -23% at the two traffic air quality monitoring stations. Despite the potential improvements, our simulations suggest that current measures are insufficient to comply with EU air quality standards and that further traffic restriction policies to reduce traffic demand are needed.The authors acknowledge CARNET-The Future Mobility Research HUB to allow the usage and work on the BCN-VML network, as well as PTV VISUM for the traffic software license. The author thankfully acknowledges the computer resources at MareNostrum and the technical support pro- vided by Barcelona Supercomputing Center (PRACE, AECT-2020-1-0007, AECT-2021-1-0027). The authors also acknowledge the support from the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (MICINN) as part of the BROWNING project RTI2018-099894-B-I00 and NUTRIENT project CGL2017-88911-R and the support from the Agencia Estatal de Investigacion (AEI) as part of the VITALISE project (PID2019-108086RA- I00/AEI/10.13039/501100011033). Carlos Pérez García-Pando acknowl- edges the long-term support from the AXA Chair in Sand and Dust Storms (AXA Research Fund), as well as the support received through the Ramón y Cajal programme (grant RYC-2015-18690) of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

100 años investigando el mar. El IEO en su centenario (1914-2014).

Se trata de un libro que pretende divulgar a la sociedad las principales investigaciones multidisciplinares llevadas a cabo por el Instituto Español de Oceanografía durante su primer siglo de vida, y dar a conocer la historia del organismo, de su Sede Central y de los nueve centros oceanográficos repartidos por los litorales mediterráneo y atlántico, en la península y archipiélagos.Kongsberg 20

Ahora / Ara

La cinquena edició del microrelatari per l’eradicació de la violència contra les dones de l’Institut Universitari d’Estudis Feministes i de Gènere «Purificación Escribano» de la Universitat Jaume I vol ser una declaració d’esperança. Aquest és el moment en el qual les dones (i els homes) hem de fer un pas endavant i eliminar la violència sistèmica contra les dones. Ara és el moment de denunciar el masclisme i els micromasclismes començant a construir una societat més igualitària. Cadascun dels relats del llibre és una denúncia i una declaració que ens encamina cap a un món millor

Ressenyes

Index de les obres ressenyades: Gavin MENZIES, 1421. El año en que China descubrió el Mund

Creació d’una linia de fabricació d’engranatges per a la indústria de l'automòbil

El present projecte, tracta de la industrialització d’una línia de mecanitzat d’engranatges. Aquestes rodes dentades, un cop mecanitzades, s’enviaran al client per al seu posterior muntatge dins d'una caixa de canvis. El procés de mecanització, que es del que tracta el present projecte, es desenvolupa a ENGRANATSA. Empresa dedicada a la fabricació de components mecànics per l’automoció i especialitzada en la fabricació d’engranatges d’alta precisió. Després d’obtenir la feina del client, ha calgut fer un gran treball per dur a terme el projecte. Partint dels estudis realitzats per part del client sobre vendes estimades, s’ha elaborat tot el procés d’industrialització. Estudiant totes les necessitats productives requerides. Primerament s’han definit els processos productius, les màquines i la distribució en planta més adient tenint en compte el flux de treball. També s’ha realitzat un estudi, sobre l’impacte ambiental que pot produir la fabricació d’aquest producte. I s’han establert els paràmetres de control de qualitat del procés, per assegurar la qualitat que demana el client. Finalment, s’ha realitzat un estudi d’avaluació de riscos als llocs de treball, amb les pertinents mesures preventives i pla de prevenció. Tot el descrit anteriorment, ha permès obtenir un procés de fabricació satisfactori, aconseguint els objectius de productivitat i qualitat esperats pel client, a demés d’una optimització i millora dels procediments que l’empresa