Two key air pollutants that affect asthma are ozone and particle pollution. Studies show a direct relationship between the number of deaths and hospitalizations for asthma and increases of particulate matter in the air, including dust, soot, fly ash, diesel exhaust particles, smoke, and sulfate aerosols. Cars are found to be a primary contributor to this problem. However, patient awareness of the link is limited. This chapter begins with a general discussion of vehicular dependency or ‘car culture’, and then focuses on the discussion of the effects of air pollution on asthma in the Netherlands. I argue that international organizations and patient organizations have not tended to put pressure on air-control, pollution-control or environmental standards agencies, or the actual polluters. While changes in air quality and the release of greenhouse gases are tied to practices like the massive corporate support for the ongoing use of motor vehicles and the increased prominence of ‘car culture’ globally, patient organizations seem more focused on treating the symptoms rather than addressing the ultimate causes of the disease. Consequently, I argue that to fully address the issue of asthma the international health organizations as well as national health ministries, patient organizations, and the general public must recognize the direct link between vehicular dependency and asthma. The chapter concludes with a recommendation for raising environmental health awareness by explicitly linking the vehicular dependency to the state of poor respiratory health. Strategic policy in the Netherlands then should explicitly link the present pattern of auto mobility to public health. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781118786949 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
MULTIFILE
The project X-TEAM D2D (Extended ATM for Door-to-Door Travel) has been funded by SESAR JU in 2020 and completed its activities in 2022, pursuing and accomplishing the definition, development and initial assessment of a Concept of Operations (ConOps) for the seamless integration of ATM and air transport into an overall intermodal network, including other available transportation means (surface, water), to support the door-to-door connectivity, in up to 4 hours, between any location in Europe. The project addressed the ATM and air transport, including Urban Air Mobility (UAM), integration in the overall transport network serving urban and extended urban (up to regional level) mobility, specifically identifying and considering the transportation and passengers service scenarios expected for the near, medium and long-term future, i.e. for the project baseline (2025), intermediate (2035) and final (2050) time horizons. In this paper, the main outcomes from the project activities are summarized, with particular emphasis on the studies about the definition of future scenarios and use cases for the integration of the vertical transport with the surface transport towards integrated intermodal transport system and about identification of the barriers towards this goal. In addition, an outline is provided on the specific ConOps for the integration of ATM in intermodal transport infrastructure (i.e. the part of the overall ConOps devoted to integration of different transportation means) and on the specific ConOps for the integration of ATM in intermodal service to passengers (i.e. the specific component of the ConOps devoted to design of a unique service to passengers). Finally, the main outcomes are summarized from the validation of the proposed ConOps through dedicated simulations.
DOCUMENT
Landside operations in air cargo terminals consist of many freight forwarders (FFWs) delivering and picking up cargo at the capacity-constrained loading docks at the airport's ground handlers' (GHs) facilities. To improve the operations of the terminal and take advantage of their geographical proximity a small set of FFWs can build a coalition to consolidate stochastically-arriving shipments and share truck fleet capacity while other FFWs continue bringing cargo to the terminal in a non-cooperative manner. Results from a detailed discrete-event simulation model of the cargo landside operations in Amsterdam Aiport showed that all operational policies had trade-offs in terms of the average shipment cycle time of coalition FFWs, the average shipment cycle time of non-coalition FFWs, and the total distance traveled by the coalition fleet, suggesting that horizontal cooperation in this context was not always beneficial, contrary to what previous studies on horizontal cooperation have found. Since dock capacity constitutes a significant constraint on operations in air cargo hubs, this paper also investigates the effect of dock capacity utilization and horizontal cooperation on the performance of consolidation policies implemented by the coalition. Thus, we built a general model of the air cargo terminal to analyze the effects caused by dock capacity utilization without the added complexity of landside operations at Amsterdam Airport to investigate whether the results hold for more general scenarios. Results from the general simulation model suggest that, in scenarios where dock and truck capacity become serious constraints, the average shipment cycle times of non-coalition FFWs are reduced at the expense of an increase in the cycle times of FFWs who constitute the coalition. A good balance among all the performance measures considered in this study is reached by following a policy that takes advantage of consolidating shipments based on individual visits to GH.
DOCUMENT
This paper reviews the existing literature concerned with air passengers with specific access requirements, often referred as passengers with disabilities (PwDs) or passengers with reduced mobility (PRMs). While accessibility in air transport is an emerging field of research, the literature lacks a more in-depth understanding of the barriers that air passengers face, which can guide future research and help practitioners in improving the services to this passenger segment. To this end, we conducted a systematic review of 50 peer-reviewed articles to explore how these challenges have been addressed in existing literature. The analysis expanded upon the established primary barrier categories (architectural, transport, communication and information, attitudinal, and technological). Within these categories, novel sub-groups of barriers were identified and proposed. The analysis further revealed the most suggested solutions to overcoming those barriers: i) legal obligations and standard operational procedures; ii) improving airport facilities and services; iii) digitalization of operations and services; iv) recommendations for improving cabin safety and accessibility; and v) training for airport and airline staff. This study emphasizes the importance of gaining a thorough understanding of the challenges faced by PwDs and calls for more collaborative efforts from various stakeholders to enhance the accessibility and inclusivity of air travel.
LINK
from the article: "Abstract The way in which construction logistics is organised has considerable impact on production flow, transportation efficiency, greenhouse gas emissions and congestion, particularly in urban areas such as city centres. In cities such as London and Amsterdam municipalities have issued new legislation and stricter conditions for vehicles to be able to access cities and city centres in particular. Considerate clients, public as well private, have started developing tender policies to encourage contractors to reduce the environmental impact of construction projects. This paper reports on an ongoing research project applying and assessing developments in the field of construction logistics in the Netherlands. The cases include contractors and third party logistics providers applying consolidation centres and dedicated software solutions to increase transportation efficiency. The case show various results of JIT logistics management applied to urban construction projects leading to higher transportation efficiencies, and reduced environmental impact and increased production efficiency on site. The data collections included to-site en on-site observations, measurement and interviews. The research has shown considerable reductions of vehicles to deliver goods and to transport workers to site. In addition the research has shown increased production flow and less waste such as inventory, waiting and unnecessary motion on site."
DOCUMENT
Airport capacity has become a constraint in the air transportation networks, due to the growth of air traffic demand and the lack of resources able to accommodate this demand. This paper presents the algorithmic implementations of a decision support system for making a more efficient use of the airspace and ground capacity. The system would be able to provide support for air traffic controllers in handling large amount of flights while reducing to a minimum the potential conflicts. In this framework, airspace together with ground airport operations are considered. Conflicts are defined as separation minima violation between aircraft for what concerns airspace and runways, and as capacity overloads for taxiway network and terminals. The methodology proposed in this work consists of an iterative approach that couples optimization and simulation to find solutions that are resilient to perturbations due to the uncertainty present in different phases of the arrival and departure process. An optimization model was employed to find a (sub)optimal solution while a discrete event-based simulation model evaluated the objective function. By coupling simulation with optimization, we generate more robust solutions resilient to variability in the operations, this is supported by a case study of Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport.
DOCUMENT
In the framework of the research activities supported by SESAR JU, dedicated research stream is devoted to investigation of integration of Air Traffic Management (ATM) and aviation into a wider transport system able to support the implementation of Door-to-Door (D2D) travel concept. In this framework, the project X-TEAM D2D (Extended ATM for Door-to-Door Travel) has been funded by SESAR JU under the call SESAR-ER4-10-2019: ATM Role in Intermodal Transport, with Grant Agreement n. 891061. The project aims defining, developing and initially validating a Concept of Operations (ConOps) for the seamless integration of ATM and air transport into an overall intermodal network, including other available transportation means (surface, water), to support the door-to-door connectivity, in up to 4 hours, between any location in Europe, in compliance with the target assigned by the ACARE SRIA FlightPath 2050 goals. The project is focused on the consideration of ConOps for ATM and air transport integration in intermodal transport network serving urban and extended urban (up to regional level) mobility, taking into account the transportation and passengers service scenarios envisaged for the next decades, according to baseline (2025), intermediate (2035) and final (2050) time horizons. In this paper, the outcomes of the first phase of the project activities, aimed to provide the initial definition (concept outline) of the proposed overall ConOps are illustrated, emphasizing the specific activities that have been carried out up to date and the related achievements. In addition, an outlook is provided in the paper on the next project activities, expected to be carried out towards the conclusion of the studies and the validation, by means of dedicated numerical simulation campaigns, of the proposed ConOps.
DOCUMENT
Greenhouse gas emissions from air transport, and methods to calculate them, are notwell defined in the current literature. While calculating the direct emissions of CO2 is already causefor some debate, the contribution of other emissions and impacts – like nitrogen oxides (NOx),contrails, water vapour – to climate change still lacks a reliable metric. As aviation is the largestemitter of greenhouse gases within tourism, accurate estimates of carbon and non-carbon emissions are important. This paper presents some standardisation as well as general insights to assistresearchers assessing the impact of aviation on climate change in scenario studies or evaluatingmitigation policies. The IPCC introduced a radiative forcing index (RFI) to measure the role of aviation in climate change, which is in scenario studies or evaluations of policies often used as a kind ofconstant ‘equivalence factor’. The paper shows this to be inaccurate and proposes ways to accountfor both carbon and non-carbon climate impacts of air transport
DOCUMENT
Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport was the second European airport in terms of traffic in 2019, having transported 76.2 million passengers. Its large infrastructures include four runways, a large taxiway network, and 298 aircraft parking stands (131 contact) among three terminals. With the current pandemic in place, the European air traffic network has declined by −65% flights when compared with 2019 traffic (pre-COVID-19), having a severe negative impact on the aviation industry. More and more often taxiways and runways are used as parking spaces for aircraft as consequence of the drastic decrease in air traffic. Furthermore, due to safety reasons, passenger terminals at many airports have been partially closed. In this work we want to study the effect of the reduction in the physical facilities at airports on airspace and airport capacity, especially in the Terminal Manoeuvring Area (TMA) airspace, and in the airport ground side. We have developed a methodology that considers rare events such as the current pandemic, and evaluates reduced access to airport facilities, considers air traffic management restrictions and evaluates the capacity of airport ground side and airspace. We built scenarios based on real public information on the current use of the airport facilities of Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport and conducted different experiments based on current and hypothetical traffic recovery scenarios. An already known optimization metaheuristic was implemented for optimizing the traffic with the aim of avoiding airspace conflicts and avoiding capacity overloads on the ground side. The results show that the main bottleneck of the system is the terminal capacity, as it starts to become congested even at low traffic (35% of 2019 traffic). When the traffic starts to increase, a ground delay strategy is effective for mitigating airspace conflicts; however, it reveals the need for additional runways
DOCUMENT
Sleep quality and maintenance of the optimal cognitive functioning is of crucial importance for aviation safety. Fatigue Risk Management (FRM) enables the operator to achieve the objectives set in their safety and FRM policies. As in any other risk management cycle, the FRM value can be realized by deploying suitable tools that aid robust decision-making. For the purposes of our article, we focus on fatigue hazard identification to explore the possible developments forward through the enhancement of objective tools in air transport operators. To this end we compare subjective and objective tools that could be employed by an FRM system. Specifically, we focus on an exploratory survey on 120 pilots and the analysis of 250 fatigue reports that are compared with objective fatigue assessment based on the polysomnographic (PSG) and neurocognitive assessment of three experimental cases. We highlight the significance of predictive objective tools that should be deployed by contemporary FRM models. We also report the need for utilization of scientific-based tools for predictive FRM, in which objective sleep quality and neurocognitive assessment should be the core aspect. We note the period of restructuring ahead as an opportunity for operators to rethink and restructure their FRM.
DOCUMENT
