CATCH (Carbon-Aware Travel Choice in the City, Region and World of Tomorrow): D1.3 Monitoring and evaluation report

The CATCH project was a three year project to address a gap in awareness of urban transport Greenhouse Gases (GHG). The project‟s mission is “to become the natural place to look for mobility related GHG reduction advice and information”. This has been pursued by building an internet-based resource “Knowledge Engine” which engages, informs and stimulates stakeholders at different levels to tackle transport related emissions in their urban centres. The CATCH platform provides objective, comprehensive and timely information to facilitate stakeholders to identify policies to reduce GHG from urban mobility, and empower them in making informed, innovative, and effective change.This report details work done in task 1.4 (T1.4), Monitoring and Evaluation. There were three main objectives for this task: To evaluate the success of the platform design in terms of objectives (and specifically in increasing awareness on transport CO2); To establish a connection between the grounding work of D1.11 and D1.22 and the platform design of the final product; To examine the effect of the platform design on awareness of transport CO2 and motivation or intention to lower transport CO2 emissions

Report on data analysis and GHG emissions estimates related to travel choice (EU FP7 CATCH Project Deliverable 3.2)

This report describes the objectives and activities defined and carried out by task 3.2 “Data Collection/Collation/Specification” within Work Package 3 in CATCH.The Carbon Aware Travel Choice (CATCH) project was developed in response to the FP7 call for proposals that would help cities to reduce the amount of CO2 produced by travel choices. Alternative fuel technologies, sustainable transport policies, and new technologies applied to support mobility (and virtual mobility) are being developed and fine tuned throughout Europe. These technologies offer opportunities to move towards a more sustainable future. However, despite a range of initiatives, most of which are supported through projects funded by the European Commission, there is still a need for a trusted and easily accessible resource which enables travellers, policy makers and operators, and other stakeholders, to determine appropriate actions to address the growing environmental challenge of reducing the carbon dioxide emissions from urban transport by encouraging carbon-friendly travel choices. In response to that, the CATCH project aims to develop a knowledge engine to inject carbon reduction into the public’s and policy maker’s decision making . This will be an online knowledge platform that aims to:•support city stakeholders to develop sustainable transport policies;•motivate travellers to adopt sustainable transport choices. The CATCH project has developed a knowledge platform that includes two tools that allow for visualisation of data at the city level (the co-benefit tool, also called “My City”, and the Scenario tool, developed in WP4). The input to both tools is the GHG and Performance Database. The database structure was initially developed in T3.1 and described in D3.1. This document describes how data was identified and assessed, and how the database has been populated with relevant data as well as the estimation of city-specific per-capita road transport CO2 emissions. Road transport CO2 emissions were estimated by using the European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (E-PRTR), GIS data and the application of a ‘top-down’ methodology. The publishing in 2011 of a spatially disaggregated inventory of a range of diffuse atmospheric emissions based on the E-PRTR marked a significant advance in understanding variations in emissions from various sources Europe. Through this release, the CATCH platform was able to estimate city-level road transport CO2 emissions for over one hundred cities. Over 40 different indicators had sufficient coverage for the 149 cities for which per-capita road transport CO2 emissions estimates were created. That data feeds the My City tool of WP4. The My City tool allows for cities to be compared and ranks them according to their per-capita road transport CO2 emissions (and other indicators, or ‘co-benefits’). Further, it uses the 43 indicators to show how the cities are performing in six different policy areas. The data that feeds into the Scenario tool is not as expansive. However, over seventy cities were identified that had 10 common indicators with at least three distinct results. Currently, the only transport indicator is car ownership and it is not possible to include CO2 emissions estimates as only one year exists in the E-PRTR data.Future directions of this work include expanding and building upon the indicators that are available for both tools. In particular, now that a baseline has been established using the E-PRTR, accurate historic data and future versions of the E-PRTR data would allow for trending

Quasi-Empirical Fictionalism as an Approach to the Philosophy of Geometry

The central claim of this thesis is that geometry is a quasi-empirical science based on the idealisation of the elementary physical operations that we actually perform with pen and paper. This conclusion is arrived at after searching for a theory of geometry that will not only explain the epistemology and ontology of mathematics, but will also fit with the best practices of working mathematicians and, more importantly, explain why geometry gives us knowledge that is relevant to physical reality. We will be considering all the major schools of thought in the philosophy of mathematics. Firstly, from the epistemological side, we will consider apriorism, empiricism and quasi-empiricism, finding a Kitcherian style of quasi-empiricism to be the most attractive. Then, from the ontological side, we will consider Platonism, formalism, Kitcherian ontology, and fictionalism. Our conclusion will be to take a Kitcherian epistemology and a fictionalist ontology. This will give us a kind of quasiempirical-fictionalist approach to mathematics. The key feature of Kitcher's thesis is that he placed importance on the operations rather than the entities of arithmetic. However, because he only dealt with arithmetic, we are left with the task of developing a theory of geometry along Kitcherian lines. I will present a theory of geometry that parallels Kitcher's theory of arithmetic using the drawing of straight lines as the most primitive operation. We will thereby develop a theory of geometry that is founded upon our operations of drawing lines. Because this theory is based on our line drawing operations carried out in physical reality, and is the idealisation of those activities, we will have a connection between mathematical geometry and physical reality that explains the predictive power of geometry in the real world. Where Kitcher uses the Peano postulates to develop his theory of arithmetic, I will use the postulates of projective geometry to form the foundations of operational geometry. The reason for choosing projective geometry is due to the fact that by taking it as the foundation, we may apply Klein's Erlanger programme and build a theory of geometry that encompasses Euclidean, hyperbolic and elliptic geometries. The final question we will consider is the problem of conventionalism. We will discover that investigations into conventionalism give us further reason to accept the Kitcherian quasi-empirical-fictionalist approach as the most appealing philosophy of geometry available

Do frequent satisfying trips by public transport impacts its intended use in later life?

Previous studies have indicated that factors such as the built environment, attitudes and past behaviour can influence travel behaviour. However, the possible effect of travel satisfaction on travel mode choice remains underexplored, despite many studies focusing on travel satisfaction over the past years. It is likely that individuals experiencing satisfying trips with a certain travel mode will use this mode (more) frequently for future trips. In this study – using data from 984 students from Laval University, Canada – we analyse how satisfaction with public transport and the frequency of public transport use affect the intention to use public transport in later life stages. Our results indicate that public transport frequency, public transport satisfaction and the interaction between these two factors (i.e., the frequency of (dis)satisfying public transport trips) significantly affect people’s intentions to use public transport in later life, although variations in effect sizes exist between different life stages. Making public transport more pleasant and increasing ridership of children and young adults (e.g., by giving them free public transport passes) may consequently result in a higher public transport frequency in later life stages. We argue that travel satisfaction can play an important role in the formation of habitual mode use, and that satisfying trips (if undertaken frequently) are likely to be repeated in the future

Do frequent satisfying trips by public transport impact its intended use in later life?

Previous studies have indicated that factors such as the built environment, attitudes and past behaviour can influence travel behaviour. However, the possible effect of travel satisfaction on travel mode choice remains underexplored, despite many studies focusing on travel satisfaction over the past years. It is likely that individuals experiencing satisfying trips with a certain travel mode will use this mode (more) frequently for future trips. In this study—using data from 984 students from Laval University, Canada—we analyse how satisfaction with public transport and the frequency of public transport use affect the intention to use public transport in later life stages. Our results indicate that public transport frequency, public transport satisfaction and the interaction between these two factors (i.e., the frequency of (dis)satisfying public transport trips) significantly affect people’s intentions to use public transport in later life, although variations in effect sizes exist between different life stages. Making public transport more pleasant and increasing ridership of children and young adults (e.g., by giving them free public transport passes) may consequently result in a higher public transport frequency in later life stages. We argue that travel satisfaction can play an important role in the formation of habitual mode use, and that satisfying trips (if undertaken frequently) are likely to be repeated in the future

Collection time inequalities: fetching water in Ethiopia

In 2015, WHO and UNICEF reported that only 12% of Ethiopia’s population have access to water on premises. High proportion of the population thus needs to fetch water for their survival. Considering the importance of time to fetch water on an individual’s health and well-being, we aim to demonstrate where water fetching issues are the most prevalent. This study highlights the widespread burden of fetching water and the significant disparities in terms of accessibility with regards to the location of the source within population groups. Characterization of collection time by regions, type of source, education level and water fetcher illustrated where work mostly remains to reach universal access to drinking water

Revisiting MDGs in view of accessibility with particular attention to distance: examples in Eastern Africa

Data from WHO and UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) for Water Supply and Sanitation show that 91% of the worldwide population have access to an improved source of water in 2015. However, this indicator does not reflect the definition of water access considering distance to the source. This is an important factor to take into account considering that 42.5% of the world population don’t have access to water on their premises in 2015. This study examined accessibility data from the JMP by taking distance into account for 5 Eastern African countries. As reported by JMP, 72,6% of these countries population have access to an improved water source while our analysis revealed that this figure falls to 58,5 % when considering distance in the access criterion. To achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all, as desired in the new Sustainable Development Goals, this impact must be considered to ensure reasonable access to water

A review of cost–benefit analysis and multicriteria decision analysis from the perspective of sustainable transport in project evaluation

Transport decision processes have traditionally applied cost-benefit analysis (CBA) with benefits mainly relating to time savings, and costs relating to infrastructure and maintenance costs. However, a shift toward more sustainable practices was initiated over the last decades to remedy the many negative impacts of automobility. As a result, decision processes related to transport projects have become more complex due to the multidimensional aspects and to the variety of stakeholders involved, often with conflicting points of view. To support rigorous decision making, multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) is, in addition to CBA, often used by governments and cities. However, there is still no consensus in the transport field regarding a preferred method that can integrate sustainability principles. This paper presents a descriptive literature review related to MCDA and CBA in the field of transport. Among the 66 considered papers, we identified the perceived strengths and weaknesses of CBA and MCDA, the different ways to combine them and the ability of each method to support sustainable transport decision processes. We further analysed the results based on four types of rationality (objectivist, conformist, adjustive and reflexive). Our results show that both methods can help improve the decision processes and that, depending on the rationality adopted, the perceived strengths and weaknesses of MCDA and CBA can vary. Nonetheless, we observe that by adopting a more global and holistic perspective and by facilitating the inclusion of a participative process, MCDA, or a combination of both methods, emerge as the more promising appraisal methods for sustainable transport

A framework for post-project evaluation of multicriteria decision aiding processes from the stakeholders’ perspective : design and application

Numerous multicriteria decision aiding (MCDA) methods have been developed over the last decades and are now applied in various domains, sometimes using facilitated group workshops to create models. These models are all designed to improve decision processes. However, the lack of follow-up and post-project evaluations limit the understanding of how the participants experienced the group workshops and how the results were subsequently used within the organization. This is in contrast with the public participation research field, where a rich literature was developed for a posteriori evaluation of projects. Based on this literature, our research proposes a framework to evaluate, ex-post, MCDA projects. In order to illustrate this framework, we apply it to an MCDA project in Quebec City where a spatial decision support system to prioritize the redesign of streets as Complete Streets was built. Individual interviews were conducted with the Quebec City professionals that currently use, were leaders of the project, or have participated in the development of the decision support system. This research has identified that the need for change of practices within the workplace, communication problems, and the requirement for multidisciplinary work were at the root of the various challenges encountered during the workshops. Based on our experience, we propose some lessons learned and potential solutions that can enhance the body of literature in MCDA