Assessing the impact of different urban morphology scenarios on air pollutant emissions distribution

As urban areas grow with the increase in population, so do the problems associated with these areas, such as an increase in atmospheric emissions. Since urban morphology has an effect on the environment, it is necessary to design future urban morphologies to accommodate the expected growth and mitigate the associated problems. By employing an emission distribution methodology based on the relationship between land use and emission activity sectors, including transport and road traffic emissions modelling (with PTV-VISUM and TREM, respectively), this study aims to identify urban morphologies that have the potential to minimize atmospheric emissions for future multi-core regions. This study assesses three urban morphology scenarios, focused on Aveiro, Portugal, where two represent urban compaction - Focused City scenario and Independent City scenario -, and one represents an extreme version of the current urban dispersion. The impact of urban scenarios was compared against the current urban morphology. Results indicate that, for the compact urban morphologies, the Focused City scenario showed a small increase in emissions, and the Independent City scenario led to a decrease in emissions, especially for NO