Environmental Engineering

"Urban dispersion (sprawl) is a reality, however unplanned it may be. Its supporters advocate contact with nature, space and intimacy; however, alleged disadvantages include land consumption, public infrastructure and mobility costs, and housing prices.
The Research Project “Costs and Benefits of Urban Dispersion on a local scale” seeks to contribute to the debate with an objective approach based on the quantification of costs, externalities and benefits of different urban settlement patterns, thus “bringing urban form back to planning”.
This paper presents one of the Project’s tasks, the one concerning mobility costs, both internal and external. Quantified internal costs include investment, inspection, insurance, energy and maintenance; external ones include accident and environmental costs, calculated for road and rail transport.
Different methods are combined depending on available data sources in order to achieve figures for each of the cost components per vehicle-km, ton-km and passenger-km for 2005, at 2009 prices.
Results show that internal costs are larger than external ones for the majority of motorized transport, except two-wheelers, and for rail. External costs are larger than internal ones for soft modes, mainly due to high accident costs. Cost components, both internal and external, related to fuel consumption are the most relevant in heavy modes’ cost structures. Investment costs are the most important category for the majority of the remaining modes.
Results also stress that current occupancy rates, load factors and vehicle mileages hinder the economic efficiency of collective and two-wheeled modes of transportation and may contribute to the pervasiveness of cars in Portugal."

A comunicação tem como objecto a análise da cadeia logística associada ao transporte, armazenagem e distribuição da biomassa florestal (biomassa florestal primária proveniente da fracção biodegradável dos produtos gerados na floresta e que é processada para fins energéticos; e, biomassa florestal secundária, isto é, a matéria orgânica residual decorrente da exploração florestal), utilizada como material combustível nas Centrais Termoeléctricas e de Cogeração em Portugal. Um trabalho enquadrado no âmbito do “Projecto Biogair – Impacto da cadeia de valorização energética de biomassa na qualidade do ar e na política climática Portuguesa” (coordenado pelo Departamento de Ambiente e Ordenamento da Universidade de Aveiro), e que visa essencialmente: (i) caracterizar a cadeia de valorização energética de biomassa florestal em Portugal; (ii) analisar as operações logísticas inerentes à cadeia de abastecimento que lhes estão associadas. Neste sentido, analisam-se alguns dos factores que influenciam o processo de transporte (primário – integrante da fase de extracção da madeira –, e secundário – i.e. transporte realizado desde o local de armazenamento até ao terminal ou unidade consumidora), nomeadamente as características da rede de infra-estruturas de transporte (com destaque para a rede rodoviária), e as características físico-geográficas dos locais de origem e destino. A comunicação encontra-se estruturada em duas partes complementares: (i) contextualização dos principais aspectos relacionados com o transporte da biomassa, incluindo os processos de produção da biomassa, o transporte secundário e a conversão em bioenergia; (ii) análise do potencial de produção e recolha de biomassa na área de abastecimento das centrais, com destaque para o caso da Central de Belmonte.

Industrial development from the second half of the 20th century coupled with population growth and concentration in urban areas has accentuated the concern for potential effects and impacts from air pollutant emissions on environmental and human health. This study examined the Estarreja region, an urban area that has one of the largest chemical complexes in Portugal, a complex that was recently under expansion. In the scope of the INSPIRAR project, individual daily exposure of a group of individuals to particulate matter of 10 μm aerodynamic diameter (PM10) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) in two phases was determined using a microenvironmental approach. In this context, personal daily activity profiles of individuals were established for their normal routine by personal interviews. These profiles enabled determination of where each individual was at each moment of the day. Utilizing this information with hourly air quality maps simulated with URBAIR air quality model and indoor/outdoor relationships, it was possible to calculate personal daily exposure of each individual to air pollutants. Results from the analysis of daily activity profiles showed a high level of sedentariness of this population and long durations spent indoors. The studied individuals displayed high personal PM10 and NO2 exposure variability. Data demonstrated possible error when a single concentration measurement was assumed as a proxy of exposure. In general, no significant differences were found between the two population groups, indicating that workers of the chemical complex were not exposed to a greater extent to PM10 and NO2 than the general population working in the same area.

ABSTRACT Despite the increasing concern given to air quality in urban and industrial areas in recent years, particular emphasis on regulation, control and reduction of air pollutant emissions is still necessary to fully characterize the chain emissions – air quality – exposure – dose – health effects, for specific sources. In this context, INSPIRAR, a research project started in 2010, was designed to develop a multidisciplinary methodology for air quality, exposure and population health impacts assessment, of industrial pollutants emissions in an industrialized urban area. The Estarreja region was selected as a study case because it has one of the largest chemical industrial complexes in Portugal that has been recently expanded with an increase of its production capacity. This work presents an overview of the first air quality assessment for the region, based on emission inventories and monitoring data. This assessment includes an analysis of trends and the identification and characterization of past air pollution episodes according to the new Air Quality Framework Directive. The contribution of different sources and meteorological conditions to these episodes is investigated. Results show that the most problematic pollutants are ozone and PM10. The advection of contaminated air masses from neighbour regions and adverse weather conditions associated with local emissions, namely industrial activity and road traffic, are the major contributors to air quality degradation in the study region. Keywords: emissions, air quality, industrial area, air pollution episodes.

ABSTRACT Urban dispersion (sprawl) is a reality, however unplanned it may be. Its supporters advocate contact with nature, space and intimacy, however disadvantages include land consumption, public infrastructure and mobility costs and housing prices. The Research Project \“Costs and Benefits of Urban Dispersion on a local scale” seeks to contribute to the debate with an objective approach based on the quantification of costs, externalities and benefits of different urban settlement patterns. This paper presents one of the Project’s tasks, the one concerning mobility costs, including externalities. Quantified costs include investment, inspection, insurance, energy and maintenance, as well as external social and environmental costs for road transport, the most significant transport mode operating on a local scale. Different methods are combined depending on available data sources in order to achieve figures for each of the cost components per vehicle-km, ton-km and passenger-km at prices of 2005. Preliminary results for direct costs suggest that in light vehicles investment costs are responsible for the largest share of the totals, while energy costs are the most relevant cost component in heavy vehicles. Heavy duty passenger transport is significantly more expensive than their counterparts. Externalities may mount up to around half of the total costs for some road vehicles. Keywords: urban dispersion; road transport; internal costs; externalities. 1 Introduction The urban future of Europe is today a matter of great concern, since approximately 75% of the European population lives in urban areas, a number

Since 1995, the Institute for Environment and Development in Portugal has obtained >300 stack samples from various point sources of Portuguese industries. A coherent database was made with the collected results. The limit values fixed by several European legal documents consulted, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, and Dutch emission legislation, were applied to the Institute for Environment and Development stack sampling inventory (from 1995 to 2000) to evaluate the efficiency of these standards in promoting the control and reduction of atmospheric pollutants emissions, especially regarding nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, and particulate matter. The conclusion was that the original Portuguese legislation was not restrictive enough and not very efficient regarding emissions reduction. In contrast, the Dutch and Italian legislations are quite restrictive but very efficient concerning emission control for the three pollutants analyzed. One of the outcomes of this study was the publication of a new law in Portugal regulating the emissions of atmospheric pollutants. The strategy of this emissions control law follows the conclusions found in this study including the concept of a mass flow threshold and different approaches depending on source dimension.

Understanding Urban Metabolism addresses the gap between the bio-physical sciences and urban planning and illustrates the advantages of accounting for urban metabolism issues in urban design decisions. Urban metabolism considers a city as a system, and distinguishes between energy and material flows as its components. Based on research from the BRIDGE project, this book deals with how the urban surface exchanges and transforms energy, water, carbon and pollutants in cities. This book also introduces a new method for evaluating how planning alternatives can modify the physical flows of urban metabolism components and how environmental and socioeconomic components interact. The inclusion of sustainability principles into urban planning provides an opportunity to place the new knowledge provided by bio-physical sciences at the centre of the planning process, but there is a strong need to bridge knowledge and practice, as well as for a better dissemination of research results and exchan...

The main objectives of this work focus, firstly, on a review of the current existent methodologies to estimate air quality modelling uncertainty, and, secondly, in the preparation of guidelines for modelling uncertainty estimation, which can be used by local and regional authorities responsible for air quality management. From the application exercise, it was concluded that it is possible to define a subset of statistical parameters able to reproduce the general uncertainties estimation. Concerning the quality indicators defined by EU directives, the results show that the legislated uncertainty estimation measures are ambiguous and inadequate in several aspects, mainly in what concerns the error measures for hourly and daily indicators based on the highest observed concentration. A relative error at the percentile correspondent to the allowed number of exceedances of the limit value was suggested and tested, showing that is a more robust and appropriate parameter for model performance evaluation.

ABSTRACT Accordingly to the EU Directive 2001/81/EC, all the Member States should develop and implement a national programme to reduce the emissions of acidifying gases, in order to reach, before 2010, the National Emission Ceilings (NEC). In this context, Portugal has developed technical studies aiming to set up a reference scenario until 2010 and to evaluate the compliance of the emission ceilings established to this target year. In addition to this reference scenario, high and low emission reduction scenarios were also defined. Notwithstanding 2010 scenarios, the same procedure was applied to 2005 and two reduction scenarios, high and low, were considered. This works intends to evaluate the impacts of these national emission reduction scenarios on the air quality in Portugal, verifying the fulfilment of the air quality thresholds for 2005 and 2010. A numerical modelling system was applied over Portugal to these hypothetical situations and results were compared to those from an application to a baseline year - 2001. The selected numerical system is the 3D chemistry-transport model CHIMERE, which uses data from the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecast as meteorological input. Assuming the 2001 simulated meteorological conditions, the results point towards a reasonable improvement of the air quality over Portugal. It forecasted a significant decrease of ozone levels, especially in the downwind urban areas of Lisbon and Porto. These results strengthen the importance of including the NEC emission scenarios into the national strategy for air quality management. Keywords: emissions scenarios, legislation, air quality impact.

The increase of the share of renewable energy in Portugal can be met from different sources, of which forest biomass residues (FBR) can play a main role. Taking into account the demand for information about the strategy of FBR to energy, and its implications on the Portuguese climate policy, the impact of energy conversion of FBR on air quality is evaluated. Three emission scenarios were defined and a numerical air quality model was selected to perform this evaluation. The results reveal that the biomass thermal plants contribute to an increment of the pollutant concentrations in the atmosphere, however restricted to the surrounding areas of the thermal plants, and most significant for NO₂ and O₃.

ABSTRACT Urban dispersion (sprawl) is a reality, however unplanned it may be. Its supporters advocate contact with nature, space and intimacy, however disadvantages include land consumption, public infrastructure and mobility costs and housing prices. The Research Project \“Costs and Benefits of Urban Dispersion on a local scale” seeks to contribute to the debate with an objective approach based on the quantification of costs, externalities and benefits of different urban settlement patterns. This paper presents one of the Project’s tasks, the one concerning mobility costs, including externalities. Quantified costs include investment, inspection, insurance, energy and maintenance, as well as external social and environmental costs for road transport, the most significant transport mode operating on a local scale. Different methods are combined depending on available data sources in order to achieve figures for each of the cost components per vehicle-km, ton-km and passenger-km at prices of 2005. Preliminary results for direct costs suggest that in light vehicles investment costs are responsible for the largest share of the totals, while energy costs are the most relevant cost component in heavy vehicles. Heavy duty passenger transport is significantly more expensive than their counterparts. Externalities may mount up to around half of the total costs for some road vehicles. Keywords: urban dispersion; road transport; internal costs; externalities. 1 Introduction The urban future of Europe is today a matter of great concern, since approximately 75% of the European population lives in urban areas, a number