Overview
Transport contributes significantly to air pollution, and to greenhouse gas emissions, which must be drastically reduced in the near future in order to limit global warming. Transport emissions need to be monitored and understood, but mobility is also considered a vital social good. Auto manufacturers are improving the efficiency of their vehicles, but these modifications alone are not enough. Complementary approaches are necessary, addressing the density of vehicles on the road and the related impacts (such as congestion causing stop-and-go behaviour) without drastically limiting people’s mobility.
The main objective of the INTEGREEN project is to demonstrate a system that will provide the public authorities in Bolzano with distributed correlated traffic/environmental information, as the basis for eco-friendly traffic management policies. In order to do this, the INTEGREEN system will integrate dynamic traffic and environmental data provided by vehicles, with static environmental data collected by the city's environmental network stations. In addition, on the basis of the validated INTEGREEN framework, the project will study and demonstrate the quantitative impact on the urban environment of specific traffic policies, including novel strategies. This study will include a quantitative assessment of the importance of spreading processed information to the whole population through different communication channels, including existing variable message signs, and through new web-based tools. The project will be given greater impact locally and at EU level by dedicated actions, including an awareness-raising campaign for improving driver behaviour and habits.
Expected results: The main result of the INTEGREEN project will be an extension of the capabilities of the city of Bolzano's mobility centre. The results expected by the end of the project are as follows:
- Availability of information about environmental conditions at the supervisory centre to increase from once a day at present to at least 3-5 samples per hour;
- The time needed to react after an extraordinary traffic/environmental event (for example, an accident) to decrease by 30-50%;
- The ability to prevent critical situations to be increased by 30-50%;
- Update times for traffic and environmental plans to be reduced by one-third, allowing for reviews every 4 months; and
- The optimised traffic policies will directly reduce road-transport related CO2 emissions by an estimated 10-20%. A further contribution will be provided by the education of mobility participants, estimated in the order of 3-10%. Altogether, CO2 emissions will be cut by 15-30%. The impact on the emissions of other pollutants is expected to be similar.