ecotransit world – an innovative web-solution to support ... · ecotransit world – an...

Challenge A: A more and more energy efficient railway

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EcoTransIT World – An Innovative Web-Solution to Support Greening Logistics

Authors:

Ulrich Ostermayer, Head of Strategy and Process Optimization, DB Environmental Centre, Deutsche Bahn AG, Berlin, Germany

Ralph Anthes, Senior Consultant, Ingenieurgesellschaft für Verkehrswesen (IVE mbH), Hannover, Germany

Henning Schwarz, Head of Unit Sustainable Development, UIC

0 Summary EcoTransIT World is the first online tool to provide the carbon footprint, energy consumption and exhaust gas emissions of logistic chains including all transport modes – on rail, road, water, air and combined – at a global level. It is free of charge and offers open access to political decision makers as well as logistics experts: Forwarders, carriers and logistic service providers. It is designed to support corporate activities of green logistics and gives reliable information on carbon footprint in accordance with upcoming green accounting standards.

The user can enter the starting point, destination and any number of interim stops to visualise various transport combinations and compare their environmental impact. This makes it easier not only to decide which transport chain is the most economical but also which is the most environmentally friendly. Thus, users can quickly and easily calculate the environmental effect of transport chains all over the world.

With the special mass calculation services designed for professional logisticians, they can realize monthly customer reports, regional inventories or carbon accounting benchmarks very efficiently.

1 Background of EcoTransIT World Global trade and transport of goods are the vital lines of our modern way of life. However, transportation consumes our already limited natural resources and significantly contributes to global warming. More than a quarter of the worldwide CO2-emissions are caused by the transportation sector, with a tendency to grow faster than in any other sector. Hence logistics providers as well as shippers increasingly need to know the environmental impact of freight movements along the supply chain for reporting requirements and in order to reduce this impact.

The online calculator EcoTransIT World is an innovative solution to comply with these needs. Its name stands for Ecological Transport Information Tool – worldwide and it supports

forwarding companies to reduce the environmental impact of their shipments

carriers and logistic providers to show their carbon footprint and improve their logistical chains from an environmental perspective and

political decision makers, consumers and non-governmental organisations to receive reliable figures and to push green logistics solutions.

EcoTransIT World is free of charge and shows the environmental impact of freight transport – for any route in the world and any transport mode: Rail, road, air, inland and deep sea shipping and combined transport. More than showing the impact of a single shipment it analyses and compares


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different transport chains with each other thus making evident, which is the solution with the lowest impact.

EcoTransIT World was initiated by a railway consortium in the year 2000. Today, it includes one logistic provider (DB Schenker), the International Union of Railways (UIC) and six railway undertakings: Green Cargo, Renfe, SBB, SNCB Logistics, SNCF and Trenitalia. The consortium commissioned a group of 3 consultants to develop the tool: The online version of EcoTransIT as well as the integrated route planner for all transport modes have been realised by IVE Hannover. The basic methodology and data for the environment calculations have been developed by IFEU Heidelberg and Öko-Institut Berlin.

EcoTransIT has been identified as best practice-example of transport carbon accounting by the European Environment Agency (EEA) and recognised as Official Partner to the European Commission’s Campaign “Sustainable Energy Europe”.

The recent version launched during the International Transport Forum in Leipzig in May 2010 includes a lot of innovations and updates, which are going to be explained more in detail in this abstract.

2 How to use EcoTransIT World EcoTransIT World is designed to model the environmental impact of a shipment from A to B. So the focus is not on the eco-footprint of the whole vehicle. It specifically models the impact of one unit transported within the vehicle on its trip from A to B. A typical question to be analyzed by EcoTransIT World could be: What is the ecologic footprint to send a parcel of 6 bottles of wine from Johannesburg to Stockholm by plane, ship or in combination? Or: how much greenhouse gases does it make to send a container with electronic components from Shanghai to Lyon? And what combination of transport modes would be most appropriate to minimize emissions?

To get the answer the tool offers two levels of use: A standard and an expert mode. These modes differ in terms of complexity of shipment data and accuracy of results.

In the standard mode a quick, rough estimate is calculated. It does not need but basic shipment data to feed the calculator. In the expert mode these parameters can be refined according to the degree of information available for the shipment. Thus the accuracy of results can be increased to the necessary level.

2.1 Input parameters In the standard mode only 5 parameters have to be defined: Weight and type of the good, start and destination of the shipment and the transport modes to be analyzed.

In the expert mode all relevant parameters influencing the environmental footprint of the shipment can be chosen individually: Route characteristics and lengths, load factors and empty trips, vehicle sizes and engine types. To specify start and destination of the shipment the tool offers several options. Cities can be selected by name or ZIP-code, railway stations by UIC-code, harbours by UN/LO-code and airports by IATA-code. If none of these options fits, the geographical coordinates (WGS84-coordinates) can be visually chosen via GoogleMaps. Thus the application facilitates a fast and unequivocal choice of location.

2.2 Calculation Having specified the shipment the calculation can be started. This means, first, to find the route from A to B and model the distance. If different transport modes are involved, the transfer points have to be identified and the distance per leg determined. The routing process requires mode-specific models of the networks (road, rail, ship, air) and comprehensive logistic knowledge of how to use them in a


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proper way. All this knowledge is implemented in the EcoTransIT software and described more in detail in chapter 4.

Once having determined the distances of the transport chain they can be combined with energy consumption and emission factors belonging to the respective vehicles and its settings. Furthermore parameters such as load factor and empty trips have to be included and the result allocated to the goods unit considered in the vehicle. More details about this methodology can be found in chapter 5.

2.3 Output parameters As output EcoTransIT World provides the environmental impact of the shipment. Parameters covered are: Primary and final energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and air pollutants such as nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur dioxide (SO2), non-methane hydro carbons (NMHC) and particulate matter (PM). They were selected due to their ecological and hygienic relevance, which is listed in Table 1. All results can be displayed as graphs and tables or exported in csv-format to Excel and other calculation programs.

Table 1: Environmental parameters included in EcoTransIT World and their impacts

Abbr. Description Reasons for inclusion PEC Primary energy consumption Main indicator for resource consumption CO2 Carbon dioxide emissions Main indicator for greenhouse effect CO2e Greenhouse gas emissions as CO2-equivalent. Greenhouse effect NOx Nitrogen oxide emissions Acidification, eutrophication, eco-toxicity,

human toxicity, summer smog SO2 Sulphur dioxide emissions Acidification, eco-toxicity, human toxicity

NMHC Non-methane hydro carbons Human toxicity, summer smog Particulate

Matter Exhaust particulate matter from vehicles and from energy production and provision, quantified as PM 10

Human toxicity, summer smog

Furthermore the transport chains and its legs are displayed in a map and their distances edited. A report of the results can be produced in pdf-format and printed for documentation or communication purposes.

2.4 Example: Transporting one container from Beijing to Paris, Port of Gennevilliers Any user can take advantage of the online application EcoTransIT World to calculate and compare transport chains. To give an example, the transport of a standard container (TEU = twenty-foot equivalent unit) from Beijing to Paris produces the following results:

Air transport is the fastest mode, but with very high carbon emissions: a total of 84.7 tonnes CO2-equivalents including collection and delivery by truck at each end.

A ship takes longer but has a much lower impact on the environment with 2.6 - 3.7 tonnes CO2-equivalents (depending on speed)

A train has the lowest emissions with 2.9 tonnes CO2-equivalents, - including intermodal transfer.


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Figure 1: Greenhouse gas emissions, counted as CO2-equivalents, transporting one container from Beijing to Paris, Port of Gennevilliers

3 What’s new? There are quite a few characteristics that make EcoTransIT World a unique application for non-professionals and professionals in the logistics sector:

Worldwide coverage: EcoTransIT World is the first energy performance and emissions calculator on freight logistics to assess multimodal transport chains globally, including all modes: rail, road, inland waterways, ship, airplane and combined transports

GIS-based networks: Global networks of all transport modes allow GIS-based routing to and from any point in the world.

Logistical know-how: The integration of comprehensive logistical knowledge into the networks enables even non-logisticians to model transport chains in a realistic manner. The auto finder helps to choose intermodal transfer points, where suitable and necessary.

Scientific data and methodology: With the Ifeu Institute from Heidelberg and the Institute for Applied Ecology in Berlin two independent institute were commissioned with a high reputation on international level. They built up a fair and balanced methodology compliant with user needs as well as scientific constraints. Environmental data of all transport modes, in particular sea and air transport, were significantly expanded and provide reliable results.

In line with standardization: The methodology already covers most requirements being set by the upcoming CEN-standards of green accounting in transport services from 2012. Thus a harmonized quality of analysis is guaranteed between overland and overseas.

Transparent methodology: EcoTransIT World is the only eco-calculator allowing full insight into data and methodology applied. They are documented in a comprehensive background report, which is publicly available and can be downloaded under www.ecotransit.org.

Special features for professionals: On a basis of licence EcoTransIT World offers automatic data interfaces to run the calculation of lists of shipments at a time. With this so-called mass calculation services e. g. monthly customer reports, regional inventories or benchmark analysis can be realized very efficiently.

4 Networks and GIS-based routing A comparison between different transport modes can only happen if they are routed on their respective network. EcoTransIT World takes this into account and is based on huge networks including attributes, describing characteristics such as street type or electrification of rail tracks.


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Figure 2: EcoTransIT World routing via train (red), truck (grey) and sea ship (blue) from Vienna to Lisbon

4.1 Creation of suitable networks Within the release of EcoTransIT World the already existing European networks were enlarged to worldwide networks on GIS-basis. Depending on the transport mode existing networks were manipulated for routing issues or automatically created.

Street network created on basis of the vmap0-layer

Railway network created on basis of the vmap0-layer

Inland waterway network manually created on basis of maps

Overseas network created on basis of manually defined sea points

Aviation network calculated on the fly with a new distance formula

4.1.1 Removal of gaps A professional routing needs, first of all, a suitable network without gaps. A gap can influence the routing result even when it is only some centimetres wide. A gap causes a detour which does not happen in reality. To avoid gaps the IVE mbH developed a method to visualize and close gaps within the EcoTransIT World networks. Within this method all points with only one connected link where checked for a possible gap around. If a gap was identified it was closed manually. This method was used only at areas outside of Europe at the worldwide railway and street network.

4.1.2 Creation of the sea network Due to the fact that there was no sea network available, IVE mbH developed a model to create one. Therefore a worldwide country border GIS-layer was used to put so called sea nodes around the coast lines. These sea nodes have an offset of twelve miles to the coast line. Islands are covered by 4-5 sea nodes around itself. In summary about 17.000 sea nodes were placed to get a worldwide coverage.


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Based on the sea nodes and the country layer a sea network was calculated. For this purpose every sea node was linked to every other sea node. If a link between two sea nodes crosses country it was deleted, because this link is not a possible sea route. At the end the sea network layer was composed by all remaining connections (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Detail of the sea network (South Korea)

The figure shows the area around South Korea in the sea network. The black lines are the created links between the sea nodes and the blue markers are harbours.

Additional to the sea network canals like Panama, Suez, Great lakes, Northern and Easter sea, Kattegat, etc. were included manually with attributes of maximum TEUs and maximum DWTs allowed. Depending on the ship size a canal will be used or not when routing.

4.1.3 Calculation of air routes The distance calculation between two airports is based on the great circle distance and some surcharges for start-, landing and long distance detour (see Figure 4).

Figure 4: EcoTransIT World air route distance calculation

The exact formula used is:

Corrected distance = (Great Circle Distance - 185,2 km) * 1,04 + 185,2 + 60 km

This formula is provided by the Institute for Applied Ecology in Berlin and considers an extra of four percent of distance due to detours and 60 kilometres for start and landing detours.


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4.2 GIS-data information EcoTransIT uses two kinds of layers:

- Point layers, like City names, UIC-codes, Zip-code, IATA-codes and LO-code

- Line layers, like street, rail and shipping

Table 2 gives an impression of the size of the data base used in EcoTransIT World:

Name Data type Size Attributes Road Lines 8’000’000 km Road type Railway Lines 1’300’000 km Electrification, Freight-Corridor Sea net Lines 1’000’000 km - Inland waterways

Lines 1’150 km Water category

Ferry Lines 484 km Name, train ferry, truck ferry Places Points 1’800’000 Name, Country, City size Zip-Codes Points 222’597 Name, Country Stations Points 36’500 Name, UIC-Code Airports Points 1’000 Name, Classification, IATA-Code Harbours Points 7’800 Name, Classification, LOCode

Table 2: Data types and number of elements of the GIS-Layer

Most of the GIS layers have been completed manually and enriched by additional logistical know-how to map the logistical reality in a proper way. So, the classification of harbours and airports by size helps to define, which ship type or airplane is able to land. For rail the attributes of electrification and freight corridors were added individually.

4.3 Intermodal routing The routing on a single network is trivial. Therefore EcoTransIT World uses a Dijkstra routing algorithm /Kettner 2005/. For the calculation on different networks so called transfer points are needed. These transfer points are interconnections between the networks. At EcoTransIT World every location can be used as transfer point whereas not every transfer point is connected to every network. Table 3 shows location types and the connected networks.

Location Possible network connection Places, Zip-Code Street network Longitude / Latitude Street network Railway station Street network, Railway network Inland harbours Street network, Inland waterways network Sea harbours Street network, Sea network Airports Street network, Air calculation

Table 3: Locations and their connected networks

At EcoTransIT World the connection of a location to the respective network happens on the fly during every calculation. Therefor always the closest network link will be connected.

The table shows that every location is connected to the street network and e.g. a railway station is not connected to the sea network. So if the user wants to calculate a sea ship transport, which starts at a railway station the transport must use first the street network to get to the closest harbour, which is the only connection to the sea network. EcoTransIT World divides this request into three steps:

- connect the railway station to the street network (virtual)


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- connect the harbour to the street network (virtual)

- route on the street network from the railway station to the harbour

The same principle happens at the end of the transport chain, if needed.

Figure 5: Principal of EcoTransIT World intermodal routing

The figure shows a truck and a railway transport. As origin and destination are city names selected. These locations have only a connection to the street network. So for the railway transport two additional truck transports to the respective closest railway stations are needed.

4.4 Automatic transfer point determination A transport chain mostly consists of a pre-carriage, a main haul and a post-carriage. Whereas pre- and post-carriage normally is a truck or train transport the main haul can be an air or sea transport, too. EcoTransIT World automatically determines the transfer points of the transport chains. The determination depends on the involved transport mode (see Table 4).

Transport mode Transfer point determination on basis of Truck not needed Train closest railway station Sea ship used tradelane -> needed harbour size Inland ship closest inland harbour Airplane used distance -> needed air port size

Table 4: Transfer point determination versus the respective transport mode

Especially the determination of a harbour or an airport as transfer point is complex at EcoTransIT World and involves deeper logistics know-how.

All sea ship transports are divided into tradelanes, e.g. Panama-trade, Suez-trades or intra-continental trades. If for a sea ship transport pre- and on-carriage is needed but not defined by the user, the auto finder of EcoTransIT World assumes a truck transport to and from the harbours used for main haul (see Figure 6). Depending on the trade lane the used harbour must have a definite size. Running e.g. a container transport via Suez trade from Antwerp to Shanghai it needs big harbours. In this case the EcoTransIT World auto finder will search for the closest big harbour around the starting point and destination and assume a truck transport for the ‘first’ and ‘last mile’ to and from these transfer points. In case of an intra-continental trade at least a small harbour is needed and would be automatically picked out by the tool.


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In a similar way airports of an aviation transport are determined,.Here EcoTransIT World takes the length of the flight into account and the information, if oceans are crossed, to identify the correct transfer point.

Figure 6: Automatically transfer point determination at www.ecotransit.org

The determination of a transfer point between two networks is a functionality of the EcoTransIT World Server and can be used at the website and as well as at the mass calculation.

4.5 Mass calculation The mass calculation is a service of EcoTransIT World that focuses on companies willing to calculate lists of shipments at once without manual handling efforts. In technical terms the mass calculation is a batch process, where a server divides a list of shipments into single calculations and sends them transport chain by transport chain to the EcoTransIT server.

When the calculation is finished the mass calculation collects all results in a database and provides different outputs like pdf-, rtf-, csv- (Excel compatible) or xml-files depending on the individual requirement. This output can be used e.g. for customized reports directly for marketing issues (pdf-, rtf) or to fill up the own corporate data warehouse via a csv-interface for further analysis.

Figure 7: EcoTransIT World Mass Calculation work-flow


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The mass calculation works like a web service in front of the EcoTransIT server and uses almost the same techniques (see Figure 7). On the left side of the figure is an easy to handle front-end (website) where the user defines standard parameters of the calculation and uploads the transport list. The frontend sends these information to a mass calculation server, which creates a new calculation job. The mass calculation server calculates all jobs parallelly in the background and takes care of the calculation results in a respective data base.

The communication between the front-end and the mass calculation server is based on xml-requests and xml-response files. The design of the mass calculation is very flexible. It can be a very sophisticated solution with xml-web services or a standard web based interface. Some efforts are necessary to provide these mass calculation services to logisticians: Customized interfaces need to be specified, server capacity installed and maintained, security devices provided etc. That is why these services are offered – different from the online service for single shipment calculations – on a basis of licence. With this services e. g. monthly customer reports, regional inventories or benchmark analysis can be realized very efficiently.

5 Environmental data 5.1 System boundaries of processes In EcoTransIT World, those environmental impacts are considered that are linked to the operation of vehicles and to fuel production:

All emissions directly caused by the operation of vehicles and the final energy consumption are defined as tank to wheel (ttw).

Emissions and the energy consumption of the generation of final energy (fuels, electricity) are categorized as well to tank (wtt).

Not included is the production and maintenance of vehicles, the construction and maintenance of transport infrastructure and last but no least additional resource consumption like administration buildings, stations, airports, etc. Figure 8 shows an overview of the system boundaries as described.

The well to tank and the tank to wheel consumption can be displayed as separate figures or as a sum.

Figure 8: System boundaries of energy consumption and emissions included


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5.2 Data sources A comprehensive set of scientific literature was analyzed to develop a well balanced set of environmental data for all transport modes:

The final energy consumption and the vehicle emission factors of road transport are derived from generic data mainly based on two sources: The “Handbook emission factors for road transport” (HBEFA) /INFRAS 2010/ for trucks with EU emission limits and the MOVES model for EPA standard /EPA 2009/.

The final energy consumption of railways is based on primary data of several railway operators as well as statistics, e. g. in /UIC 2009/. The emissions depend on the traction type performed. When using electric traction, they are driven by the electricity mix of the power supply varying from one country to another – or even from railway operator to railway operator. For diesel emissions a mix of primary and statistic data was be used.

Sea-transport emission factors have been developed for EcoTransIT World differently than those for other modes, because of the lack of sufficient literature data on these factors. They were developed in a comprehensive bottom-up approach based on activity and technical data. The fuel consumption is mainly based on technical data (power, capacity) of the Lloyd vessel inventory with about 4000 container and 600 bulk carriers /Lloyds 2009/. The emission factors are fed by data of the International Maritime Organization /IMO 2009/, the IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories /IPCC 2006/ and the US Environmental Protection Agency /EPA 2006/.

For inland shipping energy consumption and emission factors are mainly based on generic data of /Planco 2007; Lindhjem 2004; Caterpillar 2006/.

For airplanes the basis of fuel consumption and emission data is the CORINAIR Emission Inventory Guidebook /EEA 2006/. Further emission factors were derived from databases with emissions profiles of civil jets, drawn up by the German Aerospace Center /DLR 2000/ and the aircraft performance model PIANO 3 /Piano 2008/.

Additional to the emissions caused directly by operating the vehicles all emissions and the energy consumption of the supply of final energy (well to tank) are taken into account. They are derived from /Ecoinvent 2009/. Energy mixes are based on official and UIC statistics, e. g. /Eurostat 2009; UIC 2009/.

5.3 Calculation methodology EcoTransIT World uses a complex algorithm to model the ecological footprint of individual shipments. Many parameters have to be considered in this calculation. To describe this process properly, would exceed this abstract. It is described in detail in the EcoTransIT World background report, which is publicly available /EcoTransIT World 2010/.

6 Outlook EcoTransIT World is a one of the leading online applications to model the environmental impact of freight transport. It is specially designed for professional use by forwarders, carriers and logistics providers willing to account and communicate their carbon and environmental footprint. And this group of forerunners in the field of green logistics urgently needs a professional tool like this. So the dissemination of the tool is on the agenda now: Free of charge for individual calculations, on licence basis for professional use – with automatic data interface and mass calculation.

On organizational level it means: To open today’s consortium and enlarge it to a sector platform representing all modes and all continents. It means to build up a network of forerunners in the field of


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green logistics and jointly create a kind of standard for carbon foot-printing and environmental impact assessments – a standard accepted by the whole sector and continuously improved.

7 Literature Caterpillar 2006 Marine engine selection guide. Caterpillar Marine Power Systems. DLR 2000 Deutsches Institut für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR): Databases with emissions profiles of

civil jets, drawn up by the German Aerospace Center as part of the study: TÜV-Rheinland, Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW) , Wuppertal Institute for Environment, Climate and Energy: Maßnahmen zur verursacherbezogenen Schadstoffreduzierung des zivilen Flugverkehrs [Measures for polluter-related pollution reduction in civil aviation]. Study on behalf of the Geman Federal Environmental Agency. Berlin, Wupperal, Köln: 2000 (not published)

EcoTransIT World 2010 EcoTransIT World – Ecological Transport Information Tool for Worldwide Transports: Methodology and Data. Developed by Institut für Energie- und Umweltforschung (Ifeu) / Institute for Applied Ecology in Berlin (Ökoinstitut) / Ingenieurgesellschaft für Verkehrswesen (IVE mbH). www.ecotransit.org/download/ecotransit_background_report.pdf, Berlin – Hannover – Heidelberg 07/2010

EEA 2006 EEA (European Environment Agency): EMEP/CORINAIR Emission Inventory Guidebook - 2007. Air Traffic. Kopenhagen: 2006.

EPA 2006 Current Methodologies and Best Practices in preparing Port Emission Inventories. Prepared by ICF Consultants. Final Report. January 5, 2006.

EPA 2009 Motor Vehicle Emission Simulator (MOVES), Version 2009/12/21, by EPA Office for Transportation and Air Quality, retrieved from www.epa.gov/otaq/models/moves/,

Eurostat 2009 Yearly Energy Statistics – 2007 Data IMO 2009 Second IMO GHG Study 2009: International Maritime Organization (IMO) London, UK,

April 2009; Buhaug, Ø.; Corbett, J.J.; Endresen, Ø.; Eyring, V.; Faber, J.; Hanayama, S.; Lee, D.S.; Lee, D.; Lindstad, H.; Markowska, A.Z.; Mjelde, A.; Nelissen, D.; Nilsen, J.; Pålsson, C.; Winebrake, J.J.; Wu, W.–Q.; Yoshida, K..

INFRAS 2010 Keller, M. et al, INFRAS, et al: Handbook Emission Factors for Road Transport, Ver. 3.1, Bern 2010

IPCC 2006 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories. Volume 2: Energy. Edited by Simon Eggelston, Leandro Buendia, Kyoko Miwa, Todd Ngara, and Kiyoto Tanabe. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) National Greenhouse Gas Inventories Programme.

Kettner 2005 Kettner, Michael: Netz-Evaluation und Engpassbehandlung mit makroskopischen Modellen des Eisenbahnbetriebs, Dissertation, S. 29ff. Universität Hannover 2005

Lindhjem 2004 LADCO non-road emission inventory project for locomotive, commercial marine, and recreational marine emission sources. Final report. ENVIRON Consultants prepared for Lake Michigan Air Director Consortium (LADCO)

Lloyds 2009 Lloyds register of ships 2009/2010. Lloyds Register Fairplay. London 2009. Volume 1 - 4.

Piano 2008 Pianox: Aircraft Emissions and Performance User’s Guide. Woodhouse Eaves (UK): 2008

Planco 2007 Verkehrswirtschaftlicher und ökologischer Vergleich der Verkehrsträger Straße, Schiene und Wasserstraße. Schlussbericht, November 2007. Planco Consulting in Zusammenarbeit mit Bundesanstalt für Gewässerkunde, im Auftrag der Wasser- und Schifffahrtsverwaltung des Bundes.

UIC 2009 UIC Energy and CO2 Database; 2009

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