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    <copyright>Copyright © 2026. National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.</copyright>
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    <managingEditor>tris-trb@nas.edu (Bill McLeod)</managingEditor>
    <webMaster>tris-trb@nas.edu (Bill McLeod)</webMaster>
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      <title>Studying the Effects of Aircraft Exhaust on Global and Regional Climate</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/1363057</link>
      <description><![CDATA[The direct impact of aviation on climate via the emission of greenhouse gases and particles is small relative to other anthropogenic sources. However, the potential impact of aviation on climate is unique because aviation associated sources occur at high altitudes where other anthropogenic sources are absent, and aircraft are the only major source of emissions above the Arctic Circle. The climatic and chemical impact of aviation emissions and the resulting contrails and contrail-enhanced cirrus in the troposphere and stratosphere may be significant. There are large uncertainties in relating aviation emissions to changes in radiative forcing or surface temperature, especially for contrail-associated pathways. The research seeks to find robust relationships between aircraft emissions and the properties of contrails generated by aircraft under a variety of atmospheric conditions using both a high-resolution large-eddy simulation model and telescoping global-regional climate model.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Sat, 25 Jul 2015 01:00:36 GMT</pubDate>
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      <title>Vulnerability of Transportation System and Evacuation Plan for Coastal</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/1235092</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Global warming and climate change are reshaping our world in many ways. Recent studies show that global warming will cause the sea level along the northeastern U.S. coast to rise almost twice as fast as global sea levels during this century, putting metro New York City at greater risk for catastrophic events under hurricanes and winter storms. Combined coastal surge flooding and land runoff flooding along coastlines in climate change perspectives is such an event. There is an increasing awareness that the coastal flooding may affect the resilience of the transportation infrastructure and services. However, it is currently difficult for transportation agencies to incorporate information about potential flooding into transportation planning and investment processes. The capability to predict coastal region flooding considering climate change becomes extremely valuable to develop plans reacting foreseeable disasters, which will save lives and make our transportation infrastructure more sustainable. The project proposes to predict flooding nearby coastal regions considering various scenarios due to climate change, such as sea level rise, precipitation increase, and its impact on transportation network and reaction plans, utilizing available techniques and recently developed tools. In particular, the tasks to be conducted include: (1) establishing a hybrid hydrologic and hydrodynamic flood modeling system to predict coastal flooding due to storm surge flooding and inland runoff flooding under projected global warming effects. Research will be made to achieve high resolution and high accuracy desired to resolve streets, traffic roads, and related transportation infrastructures. (2) Developing with analytical/numerical approaches to evaluate evacuation plans and to estimate minimum evacuation time based on forecasted demand under various levels of flooding conditions. (3) Application of the proposed methods and models to a selected region along the Tri-State coastline as a showcase to demonstrate their capabilities in forecasting coastal flooding and impact on transportation systems and optimizing evacuation plans. The expected deliverables are: (1) A showcase with an executable computer code and result movie/animation for a selected flood location at the Tri-State region to predict coastal flooding evolution under climate change circumstances such as sea level rise, heavy rainfall, and tide and its impact on transportation network, and to estimate evacuation related issues. (2). Reports and refereed journal and conference articles to describe concepts, theories, and schemes developed in this project. This proposal addresses coastal flooding and transportation issues due to global warming, its approach is based on the PIs' expertise and recent developed capabilities, and its team consists of junior and senior faculty and students from multiple areas and schools.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Thu, 03 Jan 2013 15:24:21 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/1235092</guid>
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      <title>Planning Level Assessment of Greenhouse Gas Emissions for Alternative Transportation Construction Projects</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/1234853</link>
      <description><![CDATA[The Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center at Rutgers University has developed, in collaboration with New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) and New Jersey Transit, a tool that allows engineers to estimate the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with specific transportation construction practices for both highway and rail projects. This includes estimating emissions from material inputs, construction equipment activity, life-cycle maintenance, project staging inputs (including emissions due to road closures during construction) over the lifetime of a project. The product is a spreadsheet tool, the Greenhouse Gas Assessment Spreadsheet for Transportation Capital Projects (GASCAP) that will allow NJDOT personnel and potentially contractors to input project data from bid sheets and specify a maintenance plan for the life of the facility. Greenhouse gases are estimated on a life cycle basis using a cradle to grave approach that accounts for upstream emissions, i.e. extraction and processing of most materials, primarily fuels, aggregate and fill, cement, asphalt, steel, plastics, galvanizing materials, paint, and others, as well as direct emissions i.e. their application and downstream emissions, which include those associated with demolition, and disposal. At present the GASCAP tool has the ability to estimate upstream, and construction emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), black carbon particulate matter, air conditioning coolants, sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) and total global warming potential. This provides a comprehensive estimate that allows project engineers to compare how different project construction decisions may affect overall life-cycle GHG emissions. In addition, the current version of the model provides a technique to estimate extra emissions associated with growth of the highway network. Currently the GASCAP model provides project specific estimates; the goal with this work is to apply the GASCAP tool to a wider range of alternative transportation construction projects to provide policy-makers with estimates that can inform higher-level decision making. Ultimately the goal is to provide a technique whereby estimates of GHG emissions can be estimated from basic information such as lane-miles or track-miles constructed, or rehabilitated, and to compare the GHG emissions associated with alternative construction and maintenance materials, practices, and techniques that are typically used in projects. Parallel to this work, VTC is collaborating with San Jose State University's Mineta Transportation Institute (under the auspices of the tier 1 transit research center, the National Mineta Transit Research Consortium (MTRC)) to estimate future transportation scenarios to reduce GHG emissions in 2050. This parallel research effort will analyze existing trends and policies aimed at reducing GHG emissions and will include a detailed modeling component of transportation and land use policy options. The work proposed here will be linked with the MTRC project to provide a means to estimate planning-level construction emissions that can be added to future transportation scenarios. Emissions associated with alternative plans, such as whether to build high-speed rail versus other modes of transportation, can be affected by these estimates. The project will also use data and analysis from another recently awarded NJDOT project, The Impact of Freight on Highway Infrastructure in New Jersey, being led by another team at Rutgers. This project will allow us to better determine how highways deteriorate as a function of freight traffic and how this affects the life-cycle maintenance plans (and consequent GHG emissions) from maintenance activity, allowing us to update GASCAP with this additional data. The primary objective of this proposed project is to enhance the GASCAP model by developing estimates of GHG emissions that are useful for policy makers and integrating these with future transportation scenarios.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Thu, 03 Jan 2013 15:20:28 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/1234853</guid>
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      <title>Evaluation of Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction Strategies for Interregional Travel</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/1232542</link>
      <description><![CDATA[The warming of the Earth's temperatures due to human activities, known as anthropogenic climate change, is a threat to the environment and human health. The transportation sector is a major contributor to anthropogenic climate change, being responsible for 27 percent of all domestic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2003. Within this sector, urban travel has been the major focus of researchers and policymakers; to fill this gap, the proposed research focuses on interregional travel. Interregional travel emits pollutants in diverse regions, challenging current regulatory approaches and raising difficult jurisdictional issues. We seek to understand the contributions of interregional travel to transportation GHG emissions, and to develop methodologies for assessing emission reduction strategies that allow a diverse set of strategies to be compared. This study takes a multi-modal approach in that it considers both interregional line-haul travel and access to the line-haul modes, and also explores potential substitute modes. We will estimate the relationship between implementation cost and GHG emission reduction for each strategy, to allow for a ranking of GHG emission reduction strategies for interregional travel as well as an estimation of the overall cost curve for GHG emission reduction.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Thu, 03 Jan 2013 14:40:18 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/1232542</guid>
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      <title>Geopolymer Concrete Investigation: The ABCs of GPC</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/1229731</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Currently, hydrated ordinary portland cement (OPC) is the most common binder used in concrete. The production of OPC requires large amounts of energy, and has a large carbon footprint, emitting approximately 5% of global CO2 emissions annually. Geopolymer cement concrete (GPC) is a relatively new material, with the potential to be an alternative to OPC. GPC has a lower environmental impact, resulting in approximately 85% less CO2 in production as compared to OPC. GPC is produced from fly ash (or other natural pozzolans), sodium hydroxide and sodium silicate. One of the principal CO2 sources and the primary energy consumption in the production of GPC results from the production of the sodium silicate "activator". The current process for producing commercial sodium silicate utilizes pure glass cullet that is subjected to elevated pressures and temperatures. The process of making sodium silicate could be made more sustainable by using discarded packaging glass cullet as an alternative silicate source.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Thu, 03 Jan 2013 13:47:42 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/1229731</guid>
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      <title>California's 2050 Transportation Context: A Response to Global Warming and Executive Order #S-3-05</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/1228368</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the transportation sector is a vital part of a coherent global warming response. In order to develop sensible responses, California policy-makers need to understand how the conditions affecting the movement of people and goods will change in the long-term future. Executive Order #S-3-05 calls for California GHG emissions in 2050 to be 80% below 1990 levels. This is a tremendous challenge to the transportation sector. California's responses are made difficult by the lack of information about likely market conditions, technological innovation, and the Federal regulatory conditions in the 2050 time frame. This project will provide research that begins to address these questions and leads to a second proposed phase for a Delphi panel that will provide the best predictions of the transportation sector's future carbon footprint. The project will examine trends in (i) transportation economics (e.g., carbon based fuel costs, vehicle technology, congestion impacts, trade), (ii) technological innovation that affect the vehicle fleet and travel demand, and (iii) the evolving Federal and international regulatory framework (e.g., possible carbon based fuel taxes, transportation pricing, investment strategies, etc). For this seed grant, information would be developed through a preliminary literature review that will frame the issues and the focus of the proposed subsequent Delphi panel. A Delphi panel is an iterative prediction process that will help transportation, energy, and policy experts converge on consensus predictions about the future. The Delphi panel is the best technique for generating predictions of future events where there is a great uncertainty. Although specific technical assessments may exist concerning specific trends, no comprehensive assessment is available. The development of California policies to achieve compliance with the Executive Order requires the best available predictions of the context for future GHG emissions reduction strategies.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Thu, 03 Jan 2013 13:19:42 GMT</pubDate>
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