Abstract
The natural greenhouse effect of the Earth’s system has long been affected among others by the excessive use of private vehicles all over the world. This has led to the fastest humanly recorded change of climate, whose implications have already started impacting human systems and assets. In an effort to gain a clear understanding of the amount of Greenhouse Gases (GHG) emitted in Greece, this paper maps carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) pollutants in the two largest cities of the country, namely Athens and Thessaloniki. In the case of Athens, the hourly volume data measured by inductive loop detectors installed at 557 locations across the city were imported to a large-scale transportation model of the city, along with the vehicle fleet composition and a detailed representation of the urban and regional road network. The outputted hourly vehicle volumes, the average speed and the vehicle fleet composition of the 81.880 links of the network for a typical weekday of October 2010 were then inputted to COPERT Micro for the calculation of the hourly and daily emissions. Afterwards, the emission values from COPERT Micro were imported to a GIS grid in order to visualize how the GHG emissions are distributed throughout the city. A similar approach was followed in the case of Thessaloniki. The simulated network consisted of 137.938 links and the emissions’ calculations were performed for a typical weekday of November 2014. In both case studies, the results at link level revealed the local pollution hot-spots and the high-emission links, which usually lie along the main urban highways. Passenger cars and light duty vehicles are the main vehicle categories contributing in GHG emissions, along with two-wheel vehicles, which strongly affect CH4 emissions. Thus, apart from alleviating the traffic in the large arterials, the application of stricter policies and cleaner technologies in these vehicle categories should be also examined, if the country needs to meet its Kyoto targets.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Ayfadopoulou, G., Stamos, I., Mitsakis, E., & Salanova, J. M. (2012). Dynamic traffic assignment based evacuation planning for CBD areas. Procedia: Social and Behavioral Sciences, 48, 1078–1087.
Ewen, C., Anagnostopoulou, M., & Ward, N. (2009). Monitoring of heavy metal levels in roadside dusts of Thessaloniki, Greece in relation to motor vehicle traffic density and flow. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 57, 483–498.
European Environment Agency (EEA). (2014). Annual European Union greenhouse gas inventory 1990–2012 and inventory report 2014. Technical report No. 09/2014.
Feidas, H., Lalas, D. (2001). Climatic changes in Mediterranean and Greece: A critical review. In: Seventh international conference on environmental science and technology, Ermoupolis, Syros, Greece.
Friedrich, M., & Galster, M. (2009). Methods for generating connectors in transport planning models. In TRB annual meeting, 2009, Washington, DC.
Gentile, G., & Noekel, K. (2009). Linear user cost equilibrium: The new algorithm for traffic assignment in VISUM. In Proceedings of European transport conference, 2009. Leeuwenhorst Conference Centre. Netherlands.
Graus, W., & Blomen, E. (2008). A low carbon vision for Greece in 2050. Project number: PECSNL073688. Utrecht: Ecofys Netherlands BV.
Hare, W. (2003). Assessment of knowledge on impacts of climate change—Contribution to the specification of Art. 2 of the UNFCCC. WBGU (German Advisory Council on Global Change).
Hellenic Statistical Authority. (2014). Demographic and social characteristics of the Resident Population of Greece according to the 2011 Population—Housing Census revision of 20/3/2014.
IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). (2015). Climate change 2014: Synthesis report.
Ministry of Environment, Energy and Climate Change (MEECC). (2012). Annual inventory submission under the convention and the Kyoto protocol for greenhouse and other gases for the years 1990–2010, Athens, Greece.
Ministry of Environment, Energy and Climate Change (MEECC). (2014). Sixth national communication and 1st biennial report under the United Nations framework convention on climate change, Athens, Greece.
Mitsakis, E., Stamos, I., Salanova Grau, J. M., Chrysochoou, E., Iordanopoulos, P., & Ayfadopoulou, G. (2013). Urban mobility indicators for Thessaloniki. Journal of Traffic and Logistics Engineering, 1, 148–152.
NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). (2005). NOAA reports December warmer than average, global temperature warmer than average.
Ntziachristos, L., & Samaras, Z. (2014). Exhaust emissions from road transport. In EMEP/EEA emission inventory guidebook 2013 (update September 2014). EMEP.
Ntziachristos, L., Gkatzoflias, D., Kouridis, C., & Samaras, Z. (2009). COPERT: A European Road Transport Emission Inventory. Information Technologies in Environmental Engineering, 491–504.
Progiou, A., & Ziomas, I. (2012). Twenty-year road traffic emissions trend in Greece. Water, Air and Soil Pollution, 223, 305–317.
Rosinowski, J. (1994). Entwicklung und Implementierung eines ÖPNV-Matrixkorrekturverfahrens mit Hilfe von Methoden der Theorie unscharfer Mengen (Fuzzy-Sets-Theorie). Master thesis, University of Karlsruhe.
Samaras, C., Ntziachristos, L., & Samaras, Z. (2014). COPERT Micro: A tool to calculate the vehicle emissions in urban areas. Paris, France: Transport Research Arena 2014.
Stamos, I., Salanova, J. M., Mitsakis, E., & Ayfadopoulou, G. (2011). Large scale dynamic traffic assignment model for real-time traveler information services. ITS 2011 “Innovation and Society”, Patras, Greece.
Wardrop, J. G. (1952). Some theoretical aspects of road traffic research. IN Proceedings of the Institute of civil engineers. Part II (pp. 325–378).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Samaras, C., Stamos, I., Ntziachristos, L., Mitsakis, E., Samaras, Z., Ayfantopoulou, G. (2016). Road Transport Induced GHG Emissions Calculation for Urban Transportation Networks: The Case of Athens and Thessaloniki in Greece. In: Grammelis, P. (eds) Energy, Transportation and Global Warming. Green Energy and Technology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30127-3_58
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30127-3_58
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-30126-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-30127-3
eBook Packages: EnergyEnergy (R0)