Potential of cold-ironing for the reduction of externalities from in-port shipping emissions: The state-owned Spanish port system case.

This paper provides insights into the potential of cold-ironing for the reduction of externalities. External cost derived from the emissions of CO2, NOx, SOx, and PM from berthed ships in the Spanish port system during 2016 are estimated providing a Spain-wide empirical evidence into where the highest externalities exist and where, on a port by port level, the introduction of cold ironing could yield the highest potential on reducing said externalities. The combined overall external costs from both local and global effects of shipping emissions from berthed vessels were between 326 and 440 million Euro. Eco-efficiency parameters are also obtained. It is found that the population in the port city as well as the composition of traffic are key factors when the external costs are determined, and they should be considered when the investment decision about where cold ironing should be placed is taken.

Environmental valuation of in-port shipping emissions per shipping sector on four Spanish ports.

This work provides an insight into the external costs associated with ships which had been berthed in four Spanish ports before COVID-19 was on the agenda. Firstly, on a port-by-port level and by individual vessel types, as this can also provide valuable insights. The economic valuation is based on the combination of the significant bottom-up European studies which follow the impact pathway approach (IPA) to calculating costs from transport air emissions. Our results showed higher total external costs for Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (€74.4 m), followed by Tenerife (€20 m), Palma de Mallorca (€19.5 m) and Pasaia (€1.5 m). The external costs by shipping subsectors give more insights into the relationships between ship types and external costs. This has been done to correctly assign the responsibilities among the different shipping sectors inside a port and to better understand the potential benefits of implementing abatement technologies, such as cold ironing. Potential benefits from cold ironing were found to differ hugely among the different ports analysed.

IsoTrotter: Visually Guided Empirical Modelling of Atmospheric Convection.

Empirical models, fitted to data from observations, are often used in natural sciences to describe physical behaviour and support discoveries. However, with more complex models, the regression of parameters quickly becomes insufficient, requiring a visual parameter space analysis to understand and optimize the models. In this work, we present a design study for building a model describing atmospheric convection. We present a mixed-initiative approach to visually guided modelling, integrating an interactive visual parameter space analysis with partial automatic parameter optimization. Our approach includes a new, semi-automatic technique called IsoTrotting, where we optimize the procedure by navigating along isocontours of the model. We evaluate the model with unique observational data of atmospheric convection based on flight trajectories of paragliders.

Evaluation of sites for the location of WEEE recycling plants in Spain.

As a consequence of new European legal regulations for treatment of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), recycling plants have to be installed in Spain. In this context, this contribution describes a method for ranking of Spanish municipalities according to their appropriateness for the installation of these plants. In order to rank the alternatives, the discrete multi-criteria decision method PROMETHEE (Preference Ranking Organisation METHod for Enrichment Evaluations), combined with a surveys of experts, is applied. As existing plants are located in North and East Spain, a significant concentration of top ranking municipalities can be observed in South and Central Spain. The method does not present an optimal structure of the future recycling system, but provides a selection of good alternatives for potential locations of recycling plants.

Material flow-based economic assessment of landfill mining processes.

This paper provides an economic assessment of alternative processes for landfill mining compared to landfill aftercare with the goal of assisting landfill operators with the decision to choose between the two alternatives. A material flow-based assessment approach is developed and applied to a landfill in Germany. In addition to landfill aftercare, six alternative landfill mining processes are considered. These range from simple approaches where most of the material is incinerated or landfilled again to sophisticated technology combinations that allow for recovering highly differentiated products such as metals, plastics, glass, recycling sand, and gravel. For the alternatives, the net present value of all relevant cash flows associated with plant installation and operation, supply, recycling, and disposal of material flows, recovery of land and landfill airspace, as well as landfill closure and aftercare is computed with an extensive sensitivity analyses. The economic performance of landfill mining processes is found to be significantly influenced by the prices of thermal treatment (waste incineration as well as refuse-derived fuels incineration plant) and recovered land or airspace. The results indicate that the simple process alternatives have the highest economic potential, which contradicts the aim of recovering most of the resources.

Testing a flexible method to reduce false monsoon onsets.

To generate information about the monsoon onset and withdrawal we have to choose a monsoon definition and apply it to data. One problem that arises is that false monsoon onsets can hamper our analysis, which is often alleviated by smoothing the data in time or space. Another problem is that local communities or stakeholder groups may define the monsoon differently. We therefore aim to develop a technique that reduces false onsets for high-resolution gridded data, while also being flexible for different requirements that can be tailored to particular end-users. In this study, we explain how we developed our technique and demonstrate how it successfully reduces false onsets and withdrawals. The presented results yield improved information about the monsoon length and its interannual variability. Due to this improvement, we are able to extract information from higher resolution data sets. This implies that we can potentially get a more detailed picture of local climate variations that can be used in more local climate application projects such as community-based adaptations.