A Just City: Optimizing Low Emission Zone Allocation
sing socio-demographic vulnerability to air pollution and transport poverty to identify adequate Low Emission Zone locations
S. Ansems (TU Delft - Technology, Policy and Management)
N. Doorn – Mentor (TU Delft - Technology, Policy and Management)
T. Verma – Mentor (TU Delft - Technology, Policy and Management)
V.J. Cortes Arevalo – Mentor (TU Delft - Technology, Policy and Management)
M. Barten – Mentor (Studio Bereikbaar)
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Abstract
Low emission zones tend affect different groups in society disproportionately and there is an urge to include injustices into policy making. Therefore, this research aims to aid the decision making process on recommending adequate locations for low emission zones and the evaluation of existing ones in the Hague based on the vulnerability to air pollution, in combination with vulnerability to transport poverty. Air pollution was operationalised by the NO2 concentration, and the transport poverty was operationalised by a neighbourhood-based mobility indicator that was corrected for proximity of key services to indicate the risk of social exclusion. A single- and multi-objective optimisation was employed.
LEZ locations were optimised for either the total population or the total vulnerable population. For the application of the Hague, some neighbourhoods dominantly come forward from the analysis. These neighbourhoods have favorable transport poverty values and in combination with poor air pollution and a higher number of (vulnerable) population it is only logical that they come forward from the analysis. Also, results for the Hague show that shifting the priority from the total population to the total vulnerable population does not have a significant effect on the outcome, especially when employing the multi-objective problem formulation. This can be explained by the fact that the highest number of vulnerable people are present at the highest populated neighbourhoods. For the case of the Hague, when employing a single-objective problem formulation, shifting from the total population to the total vulnerable population also has insignificant effects on the solution set when considering transport poverty. However, when considering the air pollution objective, there is a significant change in solution set. This implies that when taking a multi-objective approach, optimising for both air pollution and transport poverty vulnerability, the priority within the population has only minor effects on the outcomes, in stead, the trade-off between the objectives is the determining factor in the solution sets for the case of the Hague. Nevertheless, this work proposes a way to transition to a just LEZ allocation and evaluation method, that includes socio-spatial vulnerabilities to air pollution and transport poverty by employing an optimisation tool.