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. 2023 May 30;9(6):e16733.
doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e16733. eCollection 2023 Jun.

Quantification of urban mitigation potentials - coping with data heterogeneity

Fabian Reitemeyer  1 , David Fritz  2 , Nikolai Jacobi  3 , León Díaz-Bone  4 , Carla Mariño Viteri  4 , Juergen P Kropp  1   5   6
Affiliations

Quantification of urban mitigation potentials - coping with data heterogeneity

Fabian Reitemeyer et al. Heliyon. .

Abstract

Cities are at the forefront of European and international climate action. However, in many cities, the ever-growing urban population is putting pressure on settlement and infrastructure development, increasing attention to urban planning, infrastructure and buildings. This paper introduces a set of quantification approaches, capturing impacts of urban planning measures in three fields of action: sustainable building, transport and redensification. The quantification approaches have been developed to account for different levels of data availability, thus providing users with quantification approaches that are applicable across cities. The mitigation potentials of various measures such as a modal shift, the substitution of building materials with wood, and different redensification scenarios were calculated. The substitution of conventional building materials with wood was analyzed as having a high mitigation potential. Building construction, in combination with urban planning and design, are key drivers for mitigating climate change in cities. Given the data heterogeneity among cities, mixed quantification approaches could be defined and the measures and policy areas with the greatest climate mitigation potential identified.

Keywords: 0000; 1111; Data heterogeneity; Mitigation potentials; Redensification; Sustainable building; Transport.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Visualisation of the different levels of data availability in the cities selected for closer examination per field of action.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Emission saving potential under the two scenarios for all cities in the construction [%]. The what-if analysis in sustainable construction involved calculating two scenarios, a 5% (left bars) and 15% (right bars) intensification of wood as a building material. All percentage emission savings refer to the status quo of the calculated building material emissions and relate to the latest available data.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Mitigation potentials for all cities in the transport sector. All percentage emission savings refer to the status quo of the calculated transport emissions and relate to the latest available transport data.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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