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News in 2014
Version 6 of IMMISem/air, the model for road traffic emissions and air quality screening, now features an English user interface. Emission calculation is based on and in accordance with the current European Handbook for Emission factors (HBEFA 3.2).
... and a Happy New Year!
We would like to thank you for the confidence shown in our company and the interest in our work. To all our customers and partners, we wish a pleasant Advent season, a merry Christmas and a happy New Year 2015.IVU Umwelt presented a contribution to the poster session at the International VDI-Expert Forum on Atmospheric Chemistry:
Poster: 'Spatial representativeness of air quality samples at hot spots'
The first VDI-Expert Forum on Atmospheric Chemistry 'NMVOCs, NOX, O3, and the EU Thematic Strategy on Air Pollution' took place in Bonn from 19th to 20th November 2014.
The guideline VDI 4280 Part 1 has been made available in October 2014:
Staff member of IVU Umwelt contributed to this guideline that is published by KRdL, the 'Commission on Air Pollution Prevention of VDI and DIN - Standards Committee'. VDI, the Association of German Engineers, is a financially independent and politically unaffiliated, non-profit organization of 150,000 engineers and natural scientists. More than 12,000 of these members work for the VDI in an honorary capacity.
The guideline describes the planning, performance and evaluation of ambient air quality measurements and is an important element of quality assurance in monitoring and assessing air quality in the sector regulated by law.
In accordance with the guideline, the selection of the measurement sites can be based on dispersion calculations. If a dispersion calculation is available, conclusions can be drawn with respect to the spatial representativeness of possible measurement sites. The annex to the guideline provides some examples.
IVU Umwelt presented a contribution to the lecture programme at the International seminar on Low Emission Zones (LEZ) in Stockholm:
'Air quality planning and LEZ in Germany - an overview'
The seminar 'LEZ - how to estimate the air quality benefits' is part of the ERA-ENVHEALTH project ACCEPTED and took place in Stockholm from 17th to 18th June 2014.
IVU Umwelt compiled the report 'Inventory and effectiveness of measures to improve air quality', that has now been published by the German Federal Environment Agency (UBA).
In the report, the status of air quality plans published in Germany up to 30.11.2012 has been described by a thorough analysis. These plans offer an extensive overview of the current situation in Germany regarding air quality, different methodologies of assessment and proposed measures to improve the respective situations. The present project continues the work of IVU Umwelt (2009, 2007 und 2006) with a renewed update of the inventory of air quality plans. It is based on methods and results of the previous projects and aims both to identify measures planned in the German Länder in order to meet air quality limit values and to analyse plans accompanying notifications of time extensions, which generally have to contain additional measures.
Due to the longer period in which plans and measures have been developed and put into action in Germany, now there is a possibility to assess the effectiveness of measures after their respective implementation using comparative studies and, thus, found the assessment of the effectiveness of measures on more information than the expected effects noted in the plans which are normally based on estimations and scenario calculations. To do so, reports of evaluations of measure that were carried out after the adoption of the plans and the implementation of the measures were researched, analysed and documented.
The analysed measures are ‘Low emission zones' (LEZ), 'Environmental traffic management', 'ban on transit of trucks' and 'speed limits of 30 or 40 km/h on major roads'.
Using the example LEZ, the complexity of the task and the potential to assess the isolated effect of a measure was discussed.
Theoretical reduction potentials for three examples of measures concerning road traffic were assessed. A comparison of the theoretical reduction potentials with published evaluations shows good agreement with most publications.
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