Vehicles and the environment: The long journey from today's liabilities into tomorrow's assets

In 2003, transportation activities accounted for 27 percent of the U.S. total greenhouse gasses (GHG) up from the 24.8 percent in 1990 [1]. The 1990 - 2007 United States inventory of GHG Emissions shows that, in 2007, transportation activities, were responsible 1,892.2 Millions of metric tons of CO2 or 28 percent of the U.S. CO2 emissions [2]. Gasoline burning vehicles are clearly in the limelight as a major source of GHG. While, industry and academia are striving to design clean burning and electrical vehicles however this process is costly and will require few decades for zero-emission vehicles to hit the mainstream market. In this paper we argue that, vehicles, one of today's human liabilities, can become one of tomorrow's assets today's pollution war through the integration of information and communication technologies at every every stage of the transport production chain. Cooperative sensing, close loop actuators, wireless communication technologies and event-driven policies should all concur to build an optimized cyber-physical transportation network optimized for service and pollution. This approach poses many technological, behavioral, and policy challenges; however we believe it could result in cleaner, more health-conscious and less congested cities. The last century was marked by unpredictably large changes of the hearth temperature and sea levels. Between early 1900s and 2000s the average temperature of the earth surface has risen by 0.74C and the sea levels rose 10cm. Observing the data scientists expect an additional 2C to 4C and a further major increase in sea levels by 2100. Climate changes of this amplitude are closely related to major disruptions in the food chain and can potentially cause the extinction of several plants and animal species[10]. The main reason for the raising thermometer lies in 150 years industrialization: the burning of massive and ever increasing quantities of oil, gasoline, and coal, the continuous quest for land at forests' expenses, and the practice of certain intense farming methods. These activities carry the principal responsibility for the enormous amount of "greenhouse gases" in the atmosphere, especially carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide[11][8]. In western countries the road transportation sector accounts for a large share of the GHG emissions thus the urgency for its redesign. In the United States, for instance, road-transportation contributes for 28 percent of the total emissions. In particular, 33 percent of road-transportation emissions are due passenger cars, 28 percent due to light duty trucks, and SUVs, 28 percent pickup trucks and minivans, 21 percent freight trucks, and 8 percent commercial aircraft [2]. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change found similar ratios for most of the industrialized countries[8]. A major inversion of the trend will happen with the advent of zero-emission vehicles that are expected to hit the mass-market in about two decades; thus a natural question is what we can do now? We believe the road-transportation system as it is known today is obsolete and offers numerous improvement opportunities. In particular, smart vehicles can closely cooperate with an intelligent road infrastructure to reduce pollution emissions and, in general, to sense the city environmental health. Cooperative urban sensing, performed by vehicles and the urban mesh infrastructure, will be at the heart of the intelligent city traffic management with the aim of reducing pollution, fuel consumption and traffic delays. We envision vehicles as a key component of a city wide distributed sensor system able to track down pollution hot-spots and take an active role in reducing citizens exposure to pollutants. The enabling technology is already available and largely deployed in our cars. Furthermore, recent advances in vehicular communications, cooperative sensing and computer vision paved the ground for a new deal that aims at pollution control and traffic management. In this white-paper, we explore the challenges and research opportunities to transform today's basic transportation infrastructure in a sophisticated dynamic cyber-physical system. Intelligent traffic lights together with in-vehicle sensors, dynamic engines, close-loop navigation devices, will be the pivotal to ensure greener, less-polluting traffic in the city. Copyright 2009 ACM.