Emission-Exposure and Social Justice

Sub-Project Description

The main goal of this subproject is to examine systematic dependencies between social justice in metropolitan regions and aspects of their pollution exposure profiles.

Sub-Project Tasks

  • Development of concepts and methods for activity oriented emission profiles. The experimental campaigns will provide rich information on the interrelation between urban travel and emission exposure. This module seeks to review existing methods and develop a framework of analysis that incorporates existing knowledge with the specific mode and traffic oriented data collected in the other subprojects.
  • Emission-exposure field data collection. This task will design and execute the experimental campaign supporting the development of in-vehicle pollution exposure. We will target the criteria pollutants for measurements along with meteorological parameters and spatial coordinates in different transport environments (e.g. car, buses, train, pedestrian) for different age groups using low-cost personal monitoring equipment (Kumar et al., 2014a). Volunteers will be recruited to collect personal exposure profiles on targeted routes and areas. The first experimental campaign will be carried out in the UK, followed by the Netherlands and São Paulo.
  • Development and international comparison of generalized exposure profiles. The objective of this task is to generate exposure profiles of pollutants for traffic conditions and transport modes through statistical modelling. These profiles are intended to extrapolate to area covering exposure levels, assessing inequality in exposure and potential health impacts as well as analysing potential impact of TOD on exposure levels and inequality.
  • Integration of exposure profiles in existing air quality frameworks. There have been many studies focused on health outcomes of traffic emissions in São Paulo (Lima et al., 2013, Yoshizaki et al., 2010, Perin et al., 2010, Pérez-Martínez et al., 2014), the new methods are intended to extend those findings with aspects of disparity and social justice. We will estimate emissions at strategic locations in São Paulo, such as buses corridors and terminals, with high resolutions. These emissions will be analysed with exposure data and the results will be extended to an air quality model.

Contact

The contact point for this theme is Prof. Fátima Andrade from the Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences of the University of São Paulo. Should you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us.