Global population growth has led to an increase of the number of people living in urban areas. As a consequence, stresses on space, ecosystems, infrastructures, facilities and personal lifestyles have been enhanced. Problems related to the quality of life in cities are increasingly relevant, especially with regard to environmental issues. Domestic and industrial sources and, primarily, motorised traffic are responsible for pollutant emissions and noise that decisively affect life in modern cities. In this context, evaluating and monitoring urban environmental quality has become an important issue for decision making and planning of more liveable and sustainable cities. Computational simulation models for the phenomena associated with emission and propagation of noise and dispersion of air pollutants were applied within a GIS platform to generate maps of noise and pollutant concentrations. This paper presents an urban environmental quality index: City Noise-Air. In case either one of the environmental conditions (pollutants or noise level) exceeds the accepted limit, the City Noise-Air index will reflect that exceedance and thus equals zero (red). If there is no limit violation, then City Noise-Air incorporates all of the selected conditions into an overall quality index by a multi-criteria combination that allows trade-offs. A case study is presented for Viana do Castelo, a mid-sized Portuguese city, in which City Noise-Air values were calculated taking in consideration the noise level (L den) and the concentrations of CO, NO 2 , O 3 , C 6 H 6 and PM10.
This article presents results of an experimental investigation on the resistance to chemical attack (with sulphuric, hydrochloric and nitric acid) of several materials: OPC concrete, high-performance concrete, epoxy resin, acrylic painting and a fly ash-based geopolymeric mortar). Three types of acids with three high concentrations (10, 20 and 30%) were used to simulate long-term degradation. A cost analysis was also performed. The results show that the epoxy resin has the best resistance to chemical attack independently of the acid type and the acid concentration. However, the cost analysis shows that the epoxy resin-based solution is the least cost-efficient solution being 70% above the cost efficiency of the fly ash-based geopolymeric mortar.
Evaluating, monitoring and informing about urban environmental quality has become a main issue, particularly important when considered as a decisionmaking tool that contributes to more habitable and sustainable cities. Following a tendency observed in other European cities, the city of Braga (Portugal) has decided to create an infrastructure for environmental data acquisition and a webbased platform as a public information system. Some of the innovations introduced in this new platform include the use of mobile instrumented units, the extensive use of simulation software to create long-term pollution (air and noise) maps, and the presentation of the information through a geographical interface developed over Google Maps technology. This paper discusses some of the critical aspects regarding the conceptual design of such an information system, and presents the actual information system developed for Braga, named SmarBRAGA.
The emission of GHG has been steadily increasing in the last few decades, largely facilitated by the transport sector, which has been responsible for more than two-thirds of the manmade emissions in Europe. In cities, one of the possible solutions to decrease the emissions from fossil fuel engines is to replace vehicles with electric ones. This solution can be applied to the urban public fleet, namely by replacing urban buses with electric vehicles. Thus, this research work focuses on the Portuguese case study, which serves as an example of achieving zero CO2 emissions from buses by 2034. This timeframe of replacing the current bus fleet, mostly powered by fossil fuels, with a fully electric fleet is proven to bring financial, environmental, and health benefits to the population. The pathway to the decarbonization of urban public transport will unequivocally contribute directly to the accomplishment of several UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), such as the promotion of affordable and clean energy and sustainable cities and communities, as well as to the increasing climate action (SDGs 7, 11, and 13, respectively). In addition, it will provide an opportunity for the replacement of existing buses that are generally less efficient than electric buses, from both an energy and an environmental point of view. As a result of the methodology, the Portuguese urban bus fleet would be totally replaced by electric buses by 2034 (83% battery-electric and 17% hydrogen-electric), which results in zero CO2 emission from this type of public transport.
The application of sustainability principles on the definition of policies and actions for urban mobility relies on the promotion of less pollutant, economic, and more equitable modes of transport, such as walking and cycling, also known as smooth modes of transport. In this paper, a methodology is presented and described under the concept of healthy route generation. This integrates the contamination of the smooth modes of transport network, according to the noise levels and air pollution indices of the urban environment in which it is located, with the main objective of reducing the exposure level and the risk of development of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. Healthy routes can be applied to attract and promote the use of smooth modes of transport in a regular basis in urban environments.
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