Evaluating sustainable transportation infrastructure investments

交通运输部门对两个最紧迫的大气挑战作出了重大贡献：空气污染和气候变化。空气污染每年导致加拿大7000人过早死亡，是全球导致过早死亡的五大风险因素之一。气候变化预计将成为本世纪最大的公共卫生挑战，并将严重影响空气污染和基础设施。交通基础设施的建设、维护和使用会向空气中释放排放物，加剧空气污染和气候变化，从而损害人类健康和经济。CPCS是一家总部位于哥伦比亚的全球性公司，其核心业务是为运输服务提供商制定战略。它们越来越需要以有意义的方式将可持续性纳入其评估。最近在综合和简化形式建模方面取得的进展使人们有可能评估运输部门的决定如何影响与空气污染和气候变化有关的可持续性。然而，需要新的研究，将这些方法应用到加拿大的新地区，并将其纳入一个过程中，可以纳入CPCS现有的多标准决策分析。该项目将与方案协调会合作制定这样一个进程。它将调整，扩展和评估技术，包括移动的排放模型，基础设施排放模型，经济和地球系统的综合模型，以及简化形式的影响模型，以便新的研究可以应用于评估可持续的基础设施投资。这将为加拿大运输服务提供商的战略投资的可持续性提供信息。实现更可持续的决策将为这一关键基础设施的长期发展带来环境、社会和经济效益。

The transportation sector contributes significantly to the two most pressing atmospheric challenges: air pollution and climate change. Air pollution contributes to 7000 premature deaths annually in Canada, and is one of the top five risk factors contributing to premature death worldwide. Climate change is expected to be the greatest public health challenge of this century, and will significantly affect air pollution and infrastructure. Building, maintaining and using transportation infrastructure releases emissions into the air that exacerbate both air pollution and climate change, leading to damages to human health and the economy. CPCS is a Canadian-based global firm with a core business in developing strategies for transportation service providers. Increasingly, they need to incorporate sustainability into their assessments in a meaningful way. Recent advances in integrated and reduced form modelling have made it possible to evaluate how transportation sector decisions affect sustainability related to air pollution and climate change. However, new research is needed to apply these approaches to new regions in Canada, and incorporate them into a process that can be incorporated into CPCS existing multicriteria decision analysis. This project will develop such a process, in collaboration with CPCS. It will adapt, extend, and evaluate techniques including mobile emissions models, infrastructure emissions models, integrated models of the economy and earth system, and reduced-form impacts models so that novel research can be applied in evaluating sustainable infrastructure investments. This will inform the sustainability of strategic investments by Canadian transportation service providers. Enabling more sustainable decisions will yield environmental, social and economic benefits for the long duration of this critical infrastructure.