The technological innovation of hybrid and plug-in electric vehicles for environment carbon pollution control

Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV) have been promoted by providing Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) infrastructure as a possible solution to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) and other emissions by utilizing energy instead of oil for effective environmental management. The promising solution for reducing air pollution in cities is commonly regarded as electric vehicles, which helps to optimize the environment management more effectively, as a key to future low carbon mobility. However, their environmental benefits rely on the temporal and spatial sense of real use, and challenges such as limited range complicated for the rollout of an Electric Vehicle (EVs). This paper investigates the environmental carbon pollution in cities and control preventions using Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV). Further, the Artificial intelligence model has been introduced, which defines optimal automobile designs and the assignment of vehicles to drivers across a variety of scenarios, including minimum net life cycle expense, GHG emissions, and oil usage for effective environmental management. By designing overspent vehicle power for corresponding output, weight, and cost impact, the life cycle costs and the emission of GHG are reduced utilizing high battery swinging and replacing batteries as needed. Moreover, energy consumption (EC) and pollution have been greatly influenced by the use of energy sources in the environment. The significant energy consumption and pollution variables resulted in a large proportion of coal-fired energy. The results show that the PHEV can achieve better fuel economy by combining the proposed model with an allowable deviation from the state of the charge.     

A mixed model-based Johnson's relative weights for eco-efficiency assessment: The case for global food consumption

Eco-efficiency composite indicators are widely accepted as the ratio of environmental impact to created economic value. These indicators are realistic measures for assessing sustainability performance considering the economy and environment. The weights reflect the importance of indicators to the aggregated environmental impacts. Estimating the relative weight of indicators is highly subjective, and therefore the search for a single unique weighting method has been going on for years. The regression-based weights are one of the most recent trends in sustainability modeling. Since these methods are designed initially to investigate the impact of multiple variables on a response variable rather than to estimate weights, some drawbacks are associated with their potential to provide proper weights. This paper presents a novel weighting approach integrating linear mixed-effect models with Johnson's relative weights to address these drawbacks and provide meaningful relative weights for eco-efficiency composite indicators. The proposed approach's operational and computational procedures are illustrated using a real example, and the eco-efficiency of food consumption of 38 countries is estimated for the period between 1990 and 2012 using a consumption-based sustainability accounting method. The findings have shown that energy use and GHG indicators are the most critical contributor to global food consumption's environmental impacts. The country-based eco-efficiency performance in this work has shown that China, India, and Russia are located in the low eco-efficiency score class. The Spatio-temporal analysis downgraded the geographical location's significance on the trends of eco-efficiency behavior in time and space. On the other hand, it revealed the different types of emerging hot spots over the world.     

Integrated Traffic and Emission Simulation: a Model Calibration Approach Using Aggregate Information

Environmental impacts of road traffic have attracted increasing attention in project-level traffic planning and management. The conventional approach considers emission impact analysis as a separate process in addition to traffic modeling. This paper first introduces our research effort to integrate traffic, emission, and dispersion processes into a common distributed computational framework, which makes it efficient to quantify and analyze correlations among dynamic traffic conditions, emission impacts, and air quality consequences. A model calibration approach is particularly proposed when on-road or in-lab instantaneous emission measurements are not directly available. Microscopic traffic simulation is applied to generate dynamic vehicle states at the second-by-second level. Using aggregate emission estimation as standard reference, a numerical optimization scheme on the basis of a stochastic gradient approximation algorithm is applied to find optimal parameters for the dynamic emission model. The calibrated model has been validated on several road networks with traffic states generated by the same simulation model. The results show that with proper formulation of the optimization objective function, the estimated dynamic emission model can capture the trends of aggregate emission patterns of traffic fleets and predict local emission and air quality at higher temporal and spatial resolutions.     

Assessment of potential impacts of municipal solid waste treatment alternatives by using life cycle approach: a case study in Vietnam

In Vietnam, most of municipal solid waste (MSW) is disposed of at open dumping and landfill sites, and the methane gas from waste is the un-ignorable source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission. It is indispensable to explore the possibility for GHG mitigation in MSW management. The objective of this study was to estimate alternative waste treatment practices towards the GHG emission mitigation, energy consumption and generation, reduction of landfill volume, and various benefits for proposing the appropriate selection by scenario analyses for representative Vietnam’s cities. Impacts were calculated by utilizing life cycle assessment (LCA) method. A literature review survey on the current applicability of LCA database for assessing impacts from waste sector in developing countries, especially for Vietnam, was carried out. This study assessed the contribution of alternative solid waste treatment practices. The result showed that, except investment and operation costs, incineration with energy recovery seems the suitable alternative for treating waste from representative cities of Vietnam according to reduction of GHG emission and waste burden to landfill sites and energy recovery and generation. Besides, MSW composition was identified as an important factor directly influencing to impacts as well as other products and benefits of waste treatment alternatives. Reliable data on waste composition are indispensable for assessing to choose, improve, or plan the waste treatment practices towards sustainable development.     

Environmental impact analysis for the construction of subway stations: Comparison between open-excavation and underground-excavation scheme

The excessive environmental impacts from the construction of subway infrastructure have become a concern for operators who are keen on continuing to lower the environmental footprint, but the factors affecting the impacts are yet to be fully identified. Excavation scheme is the governing factor in subway construction, not only because it prescribes the ensuing construction procedures, but it also epitomizes the design philosophy towards the interaction between the subway structure and city environment. In this paper, a comparative assessment is made among the fifteen mid-point environmental impacts from the two major excavation schemes in subway construction, i.e. the open-excavation (OE) and underground-excavation (UE) scheme. The case station provides a perfect example for such a comparison as it consists of both OE and UE section at the same buried depth. GHG emissions are identified as the largest contributor after normalization. However, GHG emissions are not representative for the overall impacts. The UE section is responsible for more impacts per area than that of OE section in all the investigated categories. The gap between the two sections is attributable to the extra reinforcement procedures that protect the surrounding infrastructure from adverse settlement. Though the underground environment limits the use of construction machines, the UE construction involves more on-site impacts because it requires 11.79 times the labor used in the OE section. Based on the results, the adaptability of the two methods was discussed, considering the life-cycle performance and their interaction with the city environment.     

Classification and management issues of Greek lakes under the European Water Framework Directive: a DPSIR approach

The European Water Framework Directive (WFD) establishes a framework for the protection of water bodies. The aim of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) is to ensure sustainable management of groundwater, freshwater and marine water in the European Union, such that a minimum "good ecological status" will be obtained by 2015. We used background morphometric, hydrologic, physico-chemical and biological data, in order to highlight the ecological status of the natural Greek lakes using also the Driving-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) approach in order to link the driving forces and further the pressures with the present state of the lakes' ecosystems. In addition detailed biodiversity and habitat typology data are provided. The assessment of the DPSIR approach under the view of WFD provided a quite clear identification of pressures and the subsequent impacts of the qualitative status of the Greek lakes.     

Environmental impact of electricity relocation: A quasi-natural experiment from interregional electricity transmission

Pollutants such as sulfur would concentrate in the source regions and thus the localized impacts are more obvious. Local balance of electricity by transporting coal has resulted in dense concentration of coal-fired power plants in load centers and caused severe environmental problems. Electricity relocation through interregional transmission is another choice for energy transportation to achieve electricity balance across regions and pollution mitigation. Using interregional electricity transmission (IRET) lines in China as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper assesses the environmental impact of electricity relocation. In the assessment, the grid organization of “province as executor” in China is considered because it affects the sphere of IRET's influence on pollution mitigation. Here we show the environmental benefits of electricity relocation. We find that, electricity relocation through interregional transmission leads to the growth rate of sulfur dioxide (SO₂) emission decreasing 7% in landing areas and Sichuan province benefits most from electricity relocation. It is interesting that there is no significant increase of SO₂ emission growth rate in sending areas compared to counterfactuals if there had no IRET due to more integration of clean energy and improved emission efficiency in sending areas. Placebo study and robustness check show that the results are quite convincing. Therefore, IRET provides an appealing choice for China's environmental control in eastern region, and it is not necessarily at the cost of pollution in western region. The methodology can be applied to assess the environmental impacts of other program or policy elsewhere.     

基于灰色关联和系统聚类的大连市环境质量影响因素分析

采用灰色关联度和系统聚类分析方法,定量分析大连市社会、经济、自然、人口、能源资源和污染排放等有代表性的指标与生态环境质量的关联程度。结果表明,大连市社会经济发展与环境质量关联度为中等,经济指标与环境质量指标关联度较强,社会、人口、污染排放指标关联度中等,能源和自然指标关联度较弱。金普新区、甘井子区和长兴岛是潜在环境风险区域,需要重点关注环境质量变化趋势。普兰店区、瓦房店市和庄河市虽然属于低排放区域,但环境质量风险相对较大,应进一步加强环境风险管控。     

基于环境库兹涅茨曲线特征的桂林市大气环境状况研究

根据2006年-2012年桂林市经济发展主要指标和大气环境污染指标的统计资料,分析了该市人均 GDP 与SO2、NO x、烟（粉）尘排放量及 PM10质量浓度和 API优良率等大气环境指标的相关关系,建立了经济发展与大气环境指标之间的模拟曲线。模拟结果表明,桂林市处于工业时期,随着人均GDP增加,SO2和烟（粉）尘排放得到了一定程度的缓解,而NO x 和 PM10排放从长期看还处于上升趋势。建议改善能源结构,调整产业结构和工业布局,制定财税激励政策,开展环境综合整治,加大机动车排污防治力度,进一步控制大气污染。     

Evaluating impacts of development and conservation projects using sustainability indicators: Opportunities and challenges

There has been an increased interest in using sustainability indicators for evaluating the impacts of development and conservation projects. Past and recent experiences have shown that sustainability indicators can be powerful tools for measuring the outcomes of various interventions, when used appropriately and adequately. Currently, there is a range of methods for applying sustainability indicators for project impact evaluation at the environment–development interface. At the same time, a number of challenges persist which have implication for impact evaluation processes especially in developing countries. We highlight some key and recurrent challenges, using three cases from Kenya, Indonesia and Brazil.In this study, we have conducted a comparative analysis across multiple projects from the three countries, which aimed to conserve biodiversity and improve livelihoods. The assessments of these projects were designed to evaluate their positive, negative, short-term, long term, direct and indirect impacts. We have identified a set of commonly used sustainability indicators to evaluate the projects and have discussed opportunities and challenges associated with their application. Our analysis shows that impact evaluation processes present good opportunities for applying sustainability indicators. On the other hand, we find that project proponents (e.g. managers, evaluators, donors/funders) face challenges with establishing full impacts of interventions and that these are rooted in monitoring and evaluation processes, lack of evidence-based impacts, difficulties of measuring certain outcomes and concerns over scale of a range of impacts.We outline key lessons learnt from the multiple cases and propose ways to overcome common problems. Results from our analysis demonstrate practical experiences of applying sustainability indicators in developing countries context where there are different prevailing socio-economic, cultural and environmental conditions. The knowledge derived from this study may therefore be useful to a wider range of audience who are concerned with sustainable integration of development and environmental conservation.     

典型大气污染源动态排放清单编制方法及应用研究

随着环境空气质量精细化管理要求的提高,在应对重污染天气过程中,对大气污染源排放清单的时间分辨率提出了更高的要求。文章从固定源、移动源、油气储运源等方面探讨了大气污染源动态排放清单编制技术方法,并选取某城市进行了应用计算。结果表明,通过获取动态更新的数据,移动源的船舶、机动车、飞机可以逐时分析污染物排放量变化;固定源和油气储运源可以逐日分析。同时与相关指南算法进行定量比较,探讨了精细化改进方法及可能存在的问题,为建立更精细化动态排放清单提供有益参考。     

Developing transboundary river basin monitoring programmes using the DPSIR indicator framework

Policymakers are often dissatisfied by the lack of what they consider useful information to support water management. Analysis of this 'water information gap' shows that this is caused by a lack of proper communication between information users and information producers. To improve this communication the process of specification of information needs has been structured. Earlier experiences showed that this not only entailed developing a structure to manage the process, but also developing a structure to guide the breakdown of policy objectives into information needs. Such a structure to organise the problem supports policy makers and monitoring specialists in their communication. This paper describes three pilot projects where the DPSIR indicator framework was used to organise the problem. It is concluded that the DPSIR framework is useful for improving the communication between information users and information producers and is helpful in breaking down policy objectives into information needs in a structured way. The structured approach in this way assists in narrowing the water information gap. Use of the DPSIR framework however leads to a bias towards water management problems and does not provide for all the relevant information needs.     

The evolution of city-scale GHG emissions inventory methods: A systematic review

The capacity of cities to act on climate change mitigation is essential to fulfil the Paris Agreement target. In order to do so, cities should establish an effective climate policy which requires, as a first step, a complete greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions inventory. The accurate city-scale GHG inventory enables cities to develop, implement and track climate solution measures, mainly those related to transportation. The compilation of a city-scale GHG inventory requires a standardized method and up-to-date activity data. This systematic review critically examines 40 articles over the past 20 years to (1) identify city-scale GHG inventory methods being applied worldwide, (2) evaluate how these methods are evolving, (3) elaborate how emissions from transport sector are being estimated, and (4) determine what data types and sources of transport-related data are being used. The review was limited to articles that addressed the process of compilation of a GHG inventory. The results demonstrate that city-scale GHG inventory methods evolved from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Guidelines to a variety of GHG accounting methods that offer levels of complexity to estimate city-scale emissions. Although GHG inventory methods for city-scale have advanced over the years, almost one third of the articles reviewed were focused on the proposal of a GHG inventory framework, adjusting current methods to each city's reality or proposing new ones. The majority of the cities analysed lack local transport-related data to measure GHG emissions based on the bottom-up approach. Yet, more than 40% of the articles managed to deliver the bottom-up inventory using a diversity of data types and sources. This review shows that there is still a path to achieve a globally compatible method. This would require a joint effort between researchers and city authorities to make international protocols more compliant to each city's data availability along with the improvement of cities data collection.     

An Optimization Model for Integrated Coastal Management: Development and a Case Study Using Italy’s Comacchio Municipality

In this paper, I develop an optimization model for integrated coastal management in which decisions arise from an area-based algorithm that minimizes predicted damage caused by beach erosion and inshore flooding, while accounting for economic, social, and environmental losses. The model favors the involvement of stakeholders in coastal management, but does not use complicated assessment procedures for non-economic indicators or relative weights to combine economic, social, and environmental indicators. Instead, the integration between economic activities or properties and the environmental status and landscape is represented objectively and non-linearly by referring to initial and sustainability conditions, combined with budgetary and environmental constraints. The model successfully accounted for both human and environmental dynamics by depicting delayed effects, neighborhood externalities, and feedback effects. It calculated a single optimal value for each integrated coastal management strategy, which permitted the support of future decisions and the evaluation of past decisions. The model’s insights were based on reliable estimates, with reliability determined by calculating the confidence level. The model was successfully applied to Italy’s Comacchio coastal municipality, where it revealed the priorities for optimal beach nourishment, dune fixation, and residential and holiday housing development based on budget constraints, beach losses, flood damage, pollution impacts, and land-use constraints.     

A comparison of emission calculations using different modeled indicators with 1-year online measurements

The overall measurement of farm level greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in dairy production is not feasible, from either an engineering or administrative point of view. Instead, computational model systems are used to generate emission inventories, demanding a validation by measurement data. This paper tests the GHG calculation of the dairy farm-level optimization model DAIRYDYN, including methane (CH₄) from enteric fermentation and managed manure. The model involves four emission calculation procedures (indicators), differing in the aggregation level of relevant input variables. The corresponding emission factors used by the indicators range from default per cow (activity level) emissions up to emission factors based on feed intake, manure amount, and milk production intensity. For validation of the CH₄ accounting of the model, 1-year CH₄ measurements of an experimental free-stall dairy farm in Germany are compared to model simulation results. An advantage of this interdisciplinary study is given by the correspondence of the model parameterization and simulation horizon with the experimental farm’s characteristics and measurement period. The results clarify that modeled emission inventories (2,898, 4,637, 4,247, and 3,600 kg CO₂-eq. cow^?1 year^?1) lead to more or less good approximations of online measurements (average 3,845 kg CO₂-eq. cow^?1 year^?1 (±275 owing to manure management)) depending on the indicator utilized. The more farm-specific characteristics are used by the GHG indicator; the lower is the bias of the modeled emissions. Results underline that an accurate emission calculation procedure should capture differences in energy intake, owing to milk production intensity as well as manure storage time. Despite the differences between indicator estimates, the deviation of modeled GHGs using detailed indicators in DAIRYDYN from on-farm measurements is relatively low (between ?6.4 % and 10.5 %), compared with findings from the literature.     

Integrated Environmental Assessment of the Mid-Atlantic Region with Analytical Network Process

A decision analysis method for integrating environmental indicators was developed. This was a combination of Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and the Analytic Network Process (ANP). Being able to take into account the interdependency among variables, the method was capable of ranking ecosystems in terms of environmental conditions and suggesting cumulative impacts across a large region. Using data on land cover, population, roads, streams, air pollution, and topography of the Mid-Atlantic Region of the United States, we were able to point out areas which were in relatively poor condition and/or vulnerable to future deterioration regarding various environmental aspects. The method offered an easy and comprehensive way to combine the strengths of conventional multivariate statistics (PCA) and decision-making science tool (ANP) for integrated environmental assessment.     

An Evaluation of Microscopic Emission Models for Traffic Pollution Simulation Using On-board Measurement

As a result of the continuously increasing numbers of motor vehicles in metropolitan areas worldwide, road traffic emission levels have been recognized as a challenge during the planning and management of transportation. Experiments were conducted to collect on-road emission data using portable emission measurement systems in two Chinese cities in order to estimate real traffic emissions and energy consumption levels and to build computational models for operational transport environment projects. In total, dynamic pollutant emissions and fuel consumption levels from dozens of light duty vehicles, primarily from four different vehicle classes, were measured at a second-by-second level. Using the collected data, several microscopic emission models including CMEM, VT-Micro, EMIT, and POLY were evaluated and compared through calibration and validation procedures. Non-linear optimization methods are applied for the calibration of the CMEM and EMIT models. Numerical results show that the models can realize performance levels close to the CMEM model in most cases. The VT-Micro model shows advantages in its unanimous performance and ability to describe low emission profiles while the EMIT model has a clear physics basis and a simple model structure. Both of them can be applied when extensive emission computation is required in estimating environmental impacts resulting from dynamic road traffic.     

A strategic management model for evaluation of health,safety and environmental performance

Strategic health, safety, and environmental management system (HSE-MS) involves systematic and cooperative planning in each phase of the lifecycle of a project to ensure that interaction among the industry group, client, contractor, stakeholder, and host community exists with the highest level of health, safety, and environmental standard performances. Therefore, it seems necessary to assess the HSE-MS performance of contractor(s) by a comparative strategic management model with the aim of continuous improvement. The present Strategic Management Model (SMM) has been illustrated by a case study and the results show that the model is a suitable management tool for decision making in a contract environment, especially in oil and gas fields and based on accepted international standards within the framework of management deming cycle. To develop this model, a data bank has been created, which includes the statistical data calculated by converting the HSE performance qualitative data into quantitative values. Based on this fact, the structure of the model has been formed by defining HSE performance indicators according to the HSE-MS model. Therefore, 178 indicators have been selected which have been grouped into four attributes. Model output provides quantitative measures of HSE-MS performance as a percentage of an ideal level with maximum possible score for each attribute. Defining the strengths and weaknesses of the contractor(s) is another capability of this model. On the other hand, this model provides a ranking that could be used as the basis for decision making at the contractors’ pre-qualification phase or during the execution of the project.     

The Sustainability Dynamics Framework – A holistic approach to define and evaluate sustainability and unsustainability in the Anthropocene

The significant role and impact of humans in fostering environmental change, at all spatial-temporal scales, has been formally recognised by the development and inclusion of the Anthropocene epoch into the standardised geological time scale. Due to the role and impacts that humans are having, it is necessary to develop an understanding of the co-evolutionary relationship between humans and the environment in the Anthropocene – Specifically, in relation to the fundamental dynamics of sustainability and unsustainability. This requires the development of approaches which are capable of developing new holistic knowledge concerning the fundamental dynamics of sustainability/unsustainability operating at any specified spatial-temporal scale(s) in the Anthropocene. Henceforth, this paper proposes a holistic quantitative framework - the Sustainability Dynamics Framework. The framework integrates and extends four fundamental theories concerning the environment-human relationship into a single framework. The framework is then demonstratively applied for the first time to determine and analyse the fundamental dynamic relationships between indicated levels of sustainability (S-values) and various influencing factors, significantly expanding upon previously obtained results and analysis in Phillips (2015). The demonstrative application indicates that the SDF has a potential contribution towards advancing knowledge concerning the dynamics of sustainability/unsustainability in the Anthropocene. This will be demonstrated through the future applications of the SDF to newly developed case studies of a multi spatial-temporal nature.