Sustainability assessment approaches for intelligent transport systems: the state of the art

Abstract

The appraisal of ITS systems has become increasingly important in order to capture their full range of potential impacts. The goal of this paper is therefore to assess the appropriateness of conventional transport appraisal models and tools for this task, particularly in reflecting the environmental and socio-economic impacts of ITS. These include the most common Environmental Systems Analysis tools (ESAT), which incorporate international standards and are of considerable importance in indicating sustainability. A review of how emerging methods relate to the goal of a successful transition to a low carbon future is reported, based on the literature. The appraisal of ITS is inherently uncertain due to the decentralised nature of Information Communication Technology (ICT), therefore a range of methods to capture this aspect are reviewed. The models, weights and methods are analysed concerning their ability to estimate sustainability performance, given the numerous configurations of ubiquitous technology that may comprise ITS services. Weighting methods are important in reflecting perceptions of how sustainability should be assessed. These can be incorporated by identifying, classifying and selecting one or more ESAT's based upon their suitability for a particular application. Finally, recommendations are given on which tools can be integrated to more comprehensively reflect the performance of ITS.

Behind the Scenes of Clean Energy: The Environmental Footprint of Rare Earth Products

“…In recent years, a few LCA studies have been published across the spectrum evaluating the environmental impacts of the RE production process. The popular LCA database Ecoinvent (version 2.0 and subsequent versions) provides some information on the production of five REOs (lanthanum, cerium, neodymium, praseodymium, and samarium–europium-gadolinium mixture) from bastnasite at the Bayan Obo mines as a combined unit processes. , However, one should note that the actual ore composition at Bayan Obo is a mixture of bastnasite and monazite. In addition, in the Ecoinvent data set, the process emissions are based on the Mountain Pass facility.…”

Efficiency of Telematics Systems in Management of Operational Activities in Road Transport Enterprises

“…An in-depth analysis of specialist literature [23][24][25] indicated that despite some publications on the improvement in efficiency observed at various organisations, the significance and role of IT systems in increasing organisational efficiency have been relatively scarcely discussed [26]. Most frequently, such considerations have been side-effects resulting from major discussions on other problems [3,[27][28][29].…”

Best practices in road transport: An exploratory study

“…Several authors (De Gruyter, Currie & Rose, 2016;Kolosz & Grant-Muller, 2016) have focused their sustainability studies on transport processes owing to its impact on today's world. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), sustainable freight transport systems entail, among other features, "the ability to provide transportation that is safe, socially inclusive, accessible, reliable, affordable, fuel-efficient, environmentally friendly, low-carbon, and resilient to shocks and disruptions, including those caused by climate change and natural disasters" (UNCTAD, 2015).…”