The harmful effects of the transport sector are one of the most worrisome problems in Europe. Transport produces almost a quarter of Europe's greenhouse gas emissions and is the main cause of noise and air pollution in cities. Long-term exposure to noise and pollution may cause direct health problems, such as sleep disturbance, stress, asthma, high blood pressure and cardiac diseases. According to the latest available data from the European Environment Agency (EEA), noise is associated with more than 12,000 premature deaths every year in EU-27, whereas air pollution (PM2.5 NOx and O3) with more than 367,000. Hence, there is a need to design and manage transport and mobility in a smarter way.
Other problems addressed by NEMO are:
• EU-27 circulating car park presents discrepancies between certification tests and the real-world emissions in road vehicles. For trains, UIC noted that most present diesel-locomotives did not comply with stage IIIA of the European NRMM directive. There are no standardized criteria for their monitoring and enforcement.
• The major source of environmental noise in European urban areas is road traffic (contributing 80%), while railway traffic is the second one.
• The current systems running in main of the cities are not prepared to collect and analyse data from traffics sensors and communicating within the infrastructure or with the drivers. Digital Transformation in Europe is one of the key pillars for the Europe of 2050. Thus, it is necessary to provide to the local authorities fully functional solutions easily integrable in their system.
• The wear of car tyres that significantly contributes to the flow of microplastics into the ocean.
Therefore, Europe has the need to measure, monitor and identify all noise and pollutant sources in transport. If it is measurable, it can be targeted and reduced. With these regards, the project objectives are:
• Create totally new RS emission technology that can be integrated with existing infrastructures and can deliver gaseous emissions analyses in near real-time.
• Drastically extend existing noise measuring technology for road traffic with array technology and with engine speed and engine load detection while for rail traffic to determine TSI standardized noise level of single wagons in a train.
• Integrating fully autonomous Emissions & Noise RS systems into existing infrastructures to offer a more complete monitoring solution.
Thus, considering the goal and results achieved along whole NEMO project, High gaseous and noise emitting vehicles are circulating in European roads without effective control, and they pose a significant danger to public health. Nevertheless, these vehicles could be identified in their free-flow circulation with the use of remote sensing technology. Lessons learnt from many countries where this is already regulated should be used in Europe. Cities would especially benefit from this technology, but the lack of EU regulation prevents them from using this technology. They should be empowered not only to monitor air quality, but also to manage and reduce local emissions, which are mainly from road traffic. This leads to the following recommendations focused on promotion and standardization of pollutants and noise real-world measurements directly by the source.
