Mobility and Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Partnerships for Innovation through Bottom-up Modelling and Monitoring at Local Levels

This project advances the co-development of scientific knowledge in modelling and monitoring of street-level greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), creating government-university partnerships to accelerate the flow and exchange of research data, methods and tools to explore mitigation opportunities at the municipal scale. The project integrates scholars with cross-cutting research expertise that includes transportation engineering and planning, industrial engineering, computer science, and supply chain analytics. This research will provide an estimation of GHG emissions for multiple municipalities in Nova Scotia and explore a variety of model integration methods that address scientific and technical challenges. It will also explore newer data collection techniques for model validation and socio-economic analysis at the local level. The scientific contribution of this research will help to bridge the gap in tracking, and monitoring of changes in GHG emissions over time and to inform mitigation policies. The project will train nine highly qualified personnel (i.e., two PhDs, four masters, three undergraduate students) and a post-doctoral fellow while providing an inclusive environment for interdisciplinary dialogues. A partnership approach will be used to combine academic and professional knowledge in a way that improves the effectiveness of the integrated emissions models for tracking progress in GHG reduction at the local level. This research builds upon our multi-year partnership with the Halifax Regional Municipality and the Province of Nova Scotia. The partners bring a total of $32,000 in-kind contribution, leading to active involvement in design, and implementation of the project and assisting in delivery of research outcomes. HRM will also be contributing a cash contribution of $86,448 to help achieve the scientific objectives of the project. Partners will benefit from the use of project data, models and findings to inform monitoring protocols outlined in their policy and programs (e.g., HalifACT, a new climate action plan), analytical efforts for GHG quantification, equity assessments and testing of mitigation strategies to achieve Canada's goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.