• Energy Research
• 2021-2025close
• IT close
• Transport Research close
• Energy Research close

Project: GCOS Earth Heat Inventory - A study under the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) concerted international effort to update the Earth heat inventory (EHI), and presents an updated international assessment of ocean warming estimates, and new and updated estimates of heat gain in the atmosphere, cryosphere and land over the period from 1960 to present. Summary: The file “GCOS_EHI_1960-2020_Earth_Heat_Inventory_Ocean_Heat_Content_data.nc” contains a consistent long-term Earth system heat inventory over the period 1960-2020. Human-induced atmospheric composition changes cause a radiative imbalance at the top-of-atmosphere which is driving global warming. Understanding the heat gain of the Earth system from this accumulated heat – and particularly how much and where the heat is distributed in the Earth system - is fundamental to understanding how this affects warming oceans, atmosphere and land, rising temperatures and sea level, and loss of grounded and floating ice, which are fundamental concerns for society. This dataset is based on a study under the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) concerted international effort to update the Earth heat inventory published in von Schuckmann et al. (2020), and presents an updated international assessment of ocean warming estimates, and new and updated estimates of heat gain in the atmosphere, cryosphere and land over the period 1960-2020. The dataset also contains estimates for global ocean heat content over 1960-2020 for different depth layers, i.e., 0-300m, 0-700m, 700-2000m, 0-2000m, 2000-bottom, which are described in von Schuckmann et al. (2022). This version includes an update of heat storage of global ocean heat content, where one additional product (Li et al., 2022) had been included to the initial estimate. The Earth heat inventory had been updated accordingly, considering also the update for continental heat content (Cuesta-Valero et al., 2023).

How can urban policies and planning approaches help in achieving a safer mobility and carbon reduction in the transport sector? The attention of planners and policy makers towards the promotion of sustainability and reduction of environmental impacts has grown in recent years. This paper investigates the role that Urban Planning plays in the long term towards a safer and climate friendlier mobility, highlighting the need for integrated approaches gathering spatial planning and mobility management. After a review of several urban policies and planning strategies, initiatives, and approaches, mainly based on the urban scale, the paper presents an urban regeneration case study leading to an increase of pedestrian accessibility at the neighborhood level. This can be seen as a support tool to foster sustainable, safe, and climate friendly mobility in cities. The results of the performed analysis show a dependency of accessibility from two different factors: the distribution of services and the capillarity of the soft mobility network, which can contribute to creating a more walkable space.

The present study aims to evaluate the difference in the fluid-dynamic behavior of an overtopping wave energy converter under the incidence of irregular waves based on a realistic sea state when compared to the incidence of regular waves, representative of this sea state. Thus, the sea data of three regions from the Rio Grande do Sul coast, Brazil, were considered. Fluent software was employed for the computational modeling, which is based on the finite volume method (FVM). The numerical generation of waves occurred through the imposition of the velocity boundary conditions using transient discrete values through the WaveMIMO methodology. The volume of fluid (VOF) multiphase model was applied to treat the water–air interaction. The results for the water amount accumulated in the device reservoir showed that the fluid-dynamic behavior of the overtopping converter has significant differences when comparing the two proposed approaches. Differences up to 240% were found for the water mass accumulated in the overtopping device reservoir, showing evidence that the results can be overestimated when the overtopping device is analyzed under the incidence of the representative regular waves. Furthermore, for all studied cases, it was possible to approximate the water volume accumulated over time in the overtopping reservoir through a first-degree polynomial function.

Monitoring the state of oceans and their evolution in space and time is of fundamental importance as they are severely impacted by climate change, showing an increase in temperature, acidity and stratification. The role of metrology in the marine sector is relevant for helping oceanographers consolidate measurement approaches already in place by introducing concepts like metrological traceability and measurement uncertainty. The aim of this paper is to present some examples of successful and potential applications of metrology in oceanographic research, with a focus on past and ongoing activities in the framework of joint research cooperation, which could be applied by oceanographers to consolidate the comparability of data acquired in different experimental conditions, and places and time for some essential ocean variables. Scientific cooperation in the framework of joint research projects is particularly useful for supporting measurement capabilities in marine research worldwide, and the technologies and methods developed so far represent a starting point for improvements in international monitoring networks. These techniques may be applied by laboratories and centres working in the marine sector. Applications and possible future developments will also be discussed in this paper.

The appearance of new single-phase intensive and often coincident loads, such as the electric vehicle private charging stations can affect the operation of low voltage (LV) distribution networks. Unbalances among the three-phase loading are extremely common, even if the end-users of a given LV network have similar behaviors. Due to the coincidence of such loads, excessive voltage drops may often appear, altering the quality of supply voltage provided to the LV end-users. This work evaluates the effects of residential and other charging stations in parking lots of shopping malls or workplaces on the quality of supply voltage of LV grids. Then, a decentralized approach is proposed, based on the multi-agent system, which allows the different flexibility resources available on the grid to act together to improve the network quality. The agents cooperate to regulate the network nodal voltage, taking into account the characteristics of the resources they are controlling and the needs of their owners. A case study derived from a portion of the Italian distribution system demonstrates the validity of the approach in solving the network operation criticalities.

Stone pavements are the historical, architectural, and cultural heritage of lots of cities in Italy and the world. Road managers should be able to make decisions on the global conditions to define the most suitable strategies and maintenance interventions for every type of pavement. There are no standard monitoring methods or criteria for evaluating stone pavement performance. These pavements have more uneven surfaces than traditional pavements, but this characteristic could be accepted if type of vehicles and relative travel conditions are considered. Therefore, it is useful to define criteria for assessing roughness considering the comfort experienced by users in different vehicles. In this research, both traditional and innovative methodologies for assessing irregularities have been investigated using true stone surface profiles. In this regard, traditional performance indicators such as the International Roughness Index (IRI) defined by the ASTM E1926, the ISO 8608 classification, and the frequency-weighted vertical acceleration (awz) provided by ISO 2631-1 for comfort assessment have been considered. In the case of comfort assessment, three dynamic vehicle models (bike, automobile, and bus) have been adopted. Finally, this two-part paper also proposes an innovative straightedge analysis for stone pavements (SASP) to evaluate the effect on traffic of both pavement profile roughness and localized irregularities. In this way, the authors aim to provide an effective tool to monitor stone pavements.

In the context of global suburbanization and population aging, a low-speed, automated vehicle (LSAV) system provides essential mobility services in suburban residential areas. Although extensive studies on shared autonomous vehicle (SAV) services have been conducted, quantitative investigations on the operation of suburban LSAV systems are limited. Based on a demonstration pilot project of an autonomous vehicle called “Slocal Automated Driving”, we investigated the performance of an SAV system considering several scenarios in Kozoji Newtown, a suburban commuter town in Japan. The agent-based simulation results revealed that 40 LSAVs can satisfy the demands of 2263 daily trips with an average wait time of 15 min. However, in the case of a high-speed scenario, the same fleet size improved the level of service (LOS) by reducing the average wait time to two and a half minutes and halving the in-vehicle time. By contrast, the wait time in terms of the average and 95th percentile of the no-sharing ride scenario drastically deteriorated to an unacceptable level. Based on the fluctuations of hourly share rates, wait times, and the number of vacant vehicles, we determined that preparing for the potential fleet insufficiency periods from 7:00–13:00 and 15:00–18:00 can improve the LOS.

Starting from the relationship between urban planning and mobility management, TeMA has gradually expanded the view of the covered topics, always remaining in the groove of rigorous scientific in-depth analysis. This section of the Journal, Review Notes, is the expression of a continuous updating of emerging topics concerning relationships between urban planning, mobility and environment, through a collection of short scientific papers written by young researchers. The Review Notes are made of four parts. Each section examines a specific aspect of the broader information storage within the main interests of TeMA Journal. In particular, the Urban planning literature review section aims at presenting recent books and journals, within global scientific panorama, on selected topics and issues. This contribution aims at delving into the most severe effects due to heat waves and presenting three interesting and significant scientific books and journal that present effective adaptation strategies to limit climate crisis and improve Mediterranean resilience towards more frequent and severe heat waves. The second contribution of the Review Notes for TeMA vo. 15 highlights the need for integrated action to address the climate crisis in the Mediterranean region, bringing together the strengths and weaknesses of its shores, despite social, economic and political differences. Moreover, the extreme weather events that are occurring throughout Europe, from the south to the north, show how the Mediterranean area is particularly sensitive to climate change-related events. TeMA - Journal of Land Use, Mobility and Environment, Vol 15 No 2 (2022): The city challenges and external agents. Methods, tools and best practices