An Integrated Environmental Indicator for Urban Transportation Systems: Description and Application

Maria La Gennusa, Patrizia Ferrante, Barbara Lo Casto and Gianfranco Rizzo
Additional contact information
Maria La Gennusa: Dipartimento di Energia, ingegneria dell'Informazione e modelli Matematici (DEIM), Polytechnic School, University of Palermo, Viale delle Scienze, Ed. 9, 90128 Palermo, Italy
Patrizia Ferrante: Dipartimento di Energia, ingegneria dell'Informazione e modelli Matematici (DEIM), Polytechnic School, University of Palermo, Viale delle Scienze, Ed. 9, 90128 Palermo, Italy
Barbara Lo Casto: Dipartimento di Energia, ingegneria dell'Informazione e modelli Matematici (DEIM), Polytechnic School, University of Palermo, Viale delle Scienze, Ed. 9, 90128 Palermo, Italy
Gianfranco Rizzo: Dipartimento di Energia, ingegneria dell'Informazione e modelli Matematici (DEIM), Polytechnic School, University of Palermo, Viale delle Scienze, Ed. 9, 90128 Palermo, Italy

Energies, 2015, vol. 8, issue 10, 1-19

Abstract: A simplified version of the ecological footprint method is proposed for assessing the environmental performances of urban transportation systems. The method, starting from the knowledge of the composition of the running vehicular fleet, is here applied to a southern Italian province. It represents a synthetic indicator of the environmental pressure exerted by the system also matching the pollutant emissions with the carrying capacity of the site. Particularly, the forested area needed to absorb the CO 2 emissions of the system is compared with the total forested area of the province. The results of the case-study indicates the yearly maximum distance that each vehicle of the fleet can cover in order for their emissions to be absorbed by the surrounding forested area. Specifically, if all cars of the fleet would travel for 10,000 km/year, 97% of the forested area would be involved. Thanks to its features, this indicator can be usefully adopted for ranking different transportation options. Therefore, it could allow local administrations to environmentally hierarchize alternative plans concerning urban transportation choices.

Keywords: transportation system; environmental sustainability; indicators; ecological footprint (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/8/10/11076/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/8/10/11076/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:8:y:2015:i:10:p:11076-11094:d:56787

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().