Impact of land use on urban mobility patterns, emissions and air quality in a Portuguese medium-sized city

Abstract

The main objective of this work was to evaluate the impact of urban development trends in mobility patterns of a medium sized Portuguese city and air quality consequences, using a sequential modeling process, comprising i) land use and transportation, TRANUS model; ii) road traffic air pollutants emissions, TREM model and; iii) air quality, TAPM model. This integrated methodology was applied to a medium sized Portuguese city. In order to evaluate the implementation of the methodology, a preliminary study was performed, which consisted on the comparison of modeled mobility patterns and CO and PM 10 concentrations with measured data used in the definition of the current scenario. The comparison between modeled and monitored mobility patterns at the morning peak hour for a weekday showed an RMSE of 31%. Regarding CO concentrations, an underestimation of the modeled results was observed. Nevertheless, the modeled PM 10 concentrations were consistent with the monitored data. Overall, the results showed a reasonable consistency of the modeled data, which allowed the use of the integrated modeling system for the study scenarios. The future scenarios consisted on the definition of different mobility patterns and vehicle technology characteristics, according to two main developing trends: (1) "car pooling" scenario, which imposes a mean occupancy rate of 3 passengers by vehicle and (2) the "Euro 6" scenario, which establishes that all vehicles accomplish at least the Euro 6 standard technology. Reductions of 54% and 83% for CO, 44% and 95% for PM 10 , 44% and 87% for VOC and 44% and 79% for NO x emissions were observed in scenarios 1 and 2, respectively. Concerning air quality, a reduction of about 100 μg m −3 of CO annual average concentration was observed in both scenarios. The results of PM 10 annual concentrations showed a reduction of 1.35 μg m −3 and 2.7 μg m −3 for scenarios 1 and 2 respectively.

Effect of Land Use and Cover Change on Air Quality in Urban Sprawl

“…As a direct result of urban sprawl, land use/cover changes (LUCC), as well as their spatial distribution (i.e., landscape pattern) variations may affect pollutants emission indirectly through industrial layout, travel behavior, and other human activities [3,8,9]. In view of the widespread health impacts of air pollution [10,11], studies have increasingly focused on the association between LUCC and air pollution variation caused by urban sprawl, including research on numerical simulations and empirical statistical modeling.…”

Changes in the area and pattern of farmland in China's eastern Loess Plateau

“…In the last few decades, dramatic conversions among various land use patterns have occurred due to population growth, food scarcity, urbanization, and shifts in regional land use policy [1][2][3][4][5]. These changes have had major impacts on regional water cycles, biogeochemical cycles, biological diversity, terrestrial ecosystem productivity, and climate change [6,7].…”

Air Quality Plans for the Northern Region of Portugal: Improving Particulate Matter and Coping with Legislation

“…The Air Pollution Model (TAPM) was selected since it is suitable for long term simulations (e.g., one year), has a user friendly interface and runs fast. Additionally, TAPM has already been applied and validated in several studies over Portugal (Ribeiro, 2005;Bandeira et al, 2011) and specifically over the northern region (Borrego et al, 2010b).…”