On DICE-free Smart Cities, Particulate Matter, and Feedback-Enabled Access Control

TL;DR

This paper examines the impact of non-exhaust particulate matter emissions in cities and proposes a feedback-enabled access control and ride-sharing scheme to reduce vehicle numbers and maintain safe pollution levels.

Contribution

It challenges the focus on banning internal combustion engines by highlighting non-exhaust emissions and introduces a novel feedback-based access control method.

Findings

Tyre-related PM emissions in Dublin may exceed safe levels.

The proposed scheme can effectively limit vehicle numbers to control pollution.

Non-exhaust emissions are a significant factor in urban air quality.

Abstract

The link between transport related emissions and human health is a major issue for city municipalities worldwide. PM emissions from exhaust and non-exhaust sources are one of the main worrying contributors to air-pollution. In this paper, we challenge the notion that a ban on internal combustion engine vehicles will result in clean and safe air in our cities, since emissions from tyres and other non-exhaust sources are expected to increase in the near future. To this end, we present data from the city of Dublin that document that the current amount of tyre-related PM emissions in the city might already be above or close to the levels deemed safe by the World Health Organization. As a solution to this problem, we present a feedback-enabled distributed access control mechanism and ride-sharing scheme to limit the number of vehicles in a city and therefore maintain the amount of transport-related PM to safe levels.