Elsevier

Computers & Chemical Engineering

Volume 33, Issue 10, 14 October 2009, Pages 1531-1545
Computers & Chemical Engineering

Development of a novel framework for the design of transport policies to achieve environmental targets

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compchemeng.2009.01.010Get rights and content

Abstract

The formulation of policies requires the selection and configuration of effective and acceptable courses of action to reach explicit goals. A one-size-fits-all policy is unlikely to achieve the desired goals; as a result, the identification of a suite of alternative policies, together with clear indications of their trade-offs, is crucial to accommodate the diversity of stakeholders’ preferences. At present, the formulation of transport policies is done manually; this fact, together with the size of the space of possible policies, results in a large part of that space being left unexplored. A six-step framework to explore the space of alternative transport policies in order to achieve environmental targets is proposed. The process starts with a user-defined set of specific policy measures, using them as building blocks in the generation of alternative policy packages, clusters and future images according to the user's preferences and goals.

The analysis framework is based on the visioning and backcasting approach used in the VIBAT report [Banister, D., & Hickman, R. (2006a). Visioning and backcasting for UK transport policy (VIBAT) project. Department for Transport's Horizons Research Programme 2004/06. The Bartlett school of planning and Halcrow Group Ltd. Retrieved 1/18/2008 http://www.ucl.ac.uk/∼ucft696/vibat2.html]. The framework is being implemented as a prototype decision support system around a case study: the formulation and analysis of policies required to achieve CO2 emission targets for the transport sector in the UK. Important insights on how to develop the framework have also been elicited from engineering design. The goal is to accelerate the task of policy-making and improve the effectiveness of the resulting policies.

The proposed method and computer implementation is fundamentally different from the tools commonly used in the transport sector and is intended to assist (not replace) transport policy makers, and complement (not substitute nor compete with) existing mathematical modelling tools. This research constitutes the first step towards the development of a general family of computer-based systems that support the design of policies to achieve environmental targets—not only for transport, but also for other sectors such as energy and water.

Introduction

There is a consensus in the scientific community recognizing the effect of man-made emissions on climate and acknowledging the importance and urgency of tackling the climate change issue to avoid its catastrophic consequences. A delay in addressing the issue will result in costlier solutions that might not be as effective or even too late/ineffective. In 2007 the IPCC third working group published an assessment report on climate change mitigation (IPCC, 2007); however, an understanding of how to develop effective, acceptable and detailed policies has yet to be attained, as recent high-profile cases show, e.g. the failure of the first phase EU Emission Trading Scheme to cut emissions. Addressing such a complex problem requires the formulation of integrated policies that are coordinated and reciprocally reinforcing.

Targets on anthropogenic greenhouse gases emissions are being set by national and international bodies to stabilise their atmospheric concentrations. The United Kingdom published the Climate Change Bill in March 2007 (DEFRA, 2007, DEFRA, 2008), introducing a long-term and binding target of a 60% reduction in the UK's carbon emissions by the year 2050 in comparison to their levels in 1990. There is a wide debate on the level at which these targets should be set, but once values are agreed, there are a number of possible alternative strategies (policies) to achieve them.

The precise nature and scope of policies designed to achieve environmental targets are necessarily geographically and culturally dependent given the variability of resources, of access to technology and of political constraints at different locations and times. For this reason, a one-for-all and static policy is unlikely to achieve the desired targets. On the contrary, the need for bespoke policies that are able to accommodate periodic revisions is now widely recognized. Even for a fixed time and place, the identification of a suite of alternative policies (rather than a single “optimal” one), together with clear indications of their trade-offs, is crucial to accommodate the diversity of the stakeholders’ preferences.

The introduction of a systematic approach for exploring alternative policies using a computational methodology will accelerate and improve the process of policy-making. Based on the Visioning and Backcasting Approach (Banister & Hickman, 2006a) a new framework for policy formulation is being developed and implemented as a prototype decision support system around a case study: the formulation and analysis of the policies required to achieve CO2 emission targets for the transport sector in the UK. The goal is to accelerate the task of policy-making and improve the effectiveness of the policies. The transport sector has been chosen for the case study because it is the second largest growing source of greenhouse emissions (IPCC, 2007).

The background to policy design and the backcasting methodology are discussed in Sections 2 Background to policy design, 3 Background on backcasting and the VIBAT project, respectively. Section 4 describes the proposed framework for policy formulation and justifies the development of the resulting decision support system. Details of the Decision Support System (DSS) are provided in Section 5. The results achieved in the development of the system are presented in Section 6 followed by a discussion of its limitations and proposed future work in Section 7. The conclusions for the work are presented in Section 8.

Section snippets

Policy and policy process

A policy is a principle or guideline for action in a specific everyday-world context (Pohl, 2008). Fig. 1 shows a model of the policy process and sets in context the Policy Design step, a step whereby the components of a policy are selected and the overall policy formulated.

The development of a successful policy is a manual, labour-intensive task involving many types of objectives and criteria for success. Policies may be related to technological, economic, political and social aspects. Some

Background on backcasting and the VIBAT project

The proposed framework and the decision support system make use of the normative scenario analysis known as the Visioning and Backcasting Approach (Banister & Hickman, 2006a). Section 3.1 provides a brief description of the backcasting approach and Section 3.2 introduces the specific terminology that is used throughout the rest of the paper.

Objectives of the proposed decision support system

The research objective is to develop a working prototype of a decision support system (DSS) to facilitate and speed up the design of transport policies in order to achieve environmental targets. The proposed techniques should be applicable to different targets (e.g. CO2, CH4, NOx emissions); in different sectors (e.g. industry, transport, energy generation); with different geographical scope (e.g. local, national, regional and international); and with integrated strategies (e.g. one that

Software architecture and implementation details

Fig. 7 illustrates the software architecture of the decision support system. The Java programming language (Java, 2008) has been chosen for the development because of its characteristics of platform independence, automatic memory management and access to an extensive library of freely available code and software. The program utilizes MySQL (2008), which is the most widely used open source relational database management system. The connection between the database and the core of the system is

Results

This section describes the results achieved so far in the development of the decision support system based on the proposed framework for policy formulation.

Current limitations

The decision support system has a number of limitations. They can be assembled into four groups:

  • 1.

    Data availability:

    The VIBAT project report and its associated calculations were used as the primary source of data for the DSS. In cases where the data required was not explicitly given, the project reports were examined for implicit clues. If this examination did not yield satisfactory results, data was then generated through analysis of other available resources, and in the rest of the cases

Conclusions

The purpose of the research is to facilitate the design of policies and improve the resulting policies by using knowledge gained in other fields that address design issues, mainly from process design and synthesis. The focus has been directed towards the similarities between process and policy design with the specific aim of introducing a new framework and systematic thinking to the problem of policy formulation. A working prototype decision support system has been developed; it facilitates the

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the support of Prof. David Banister at the Transport Studies Unit of the University of Oxford and Dr. Robin Hickman from Halcrow Group Ltd. for providing additional details regarding the VIBAT project and sharing their insights.

Glossary

AHP
Analytical Hierarchical Process
API
Application Programming Interface
CBA
Cost-Benefit Analysis
CDP
Criterium DecisionPlus
CRUD
Create, Read, Update and Delete
DSS
Decision Support System
GIS
Geographical Information Systems
GraphViz
Graph Visualization Software
GUI
Graphical User Interface
ID
Identifier
JDBC
Java Database Connectivity
JPA
Java Persistence API
MCDA
Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis techniques
MCS
Monte–Carlo Simulation
SMART
Simple Multi-Attribute Rating Technique
VIBAT
Visioning and Backcasting for UK

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