Metropolitan Melbourne residential transport: A VKT regression model to estimate energy consumption and GHG emissions

Raul Alberto Marino Zamudio, Greg Foliente, Chris Pettit

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference PaperResearchpeer-review

Abstract

Household characteristics and the patterns of urban form can have a significant impact on residential transport energy consumption and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. Land-use and transport interaction models have been widely used as a method to assess the impact of future macro-changes in urban land-use, but these have simplified treatments of housing density and household typologies. Furthermore , when investigating energy use and carbon emission, most studies often only provide information at one geographical level of analysis, usually at municipality level. The present study, focused on Metropolitan Melbourne, proposes a bottom up household typology modelling approach to calculate residential transport energy consumption and associated carbon emissions using fine scale transport survey information at household level made available through the Victorian Integrated Survey of Transport and Activity (VISTA 2009-10). The household-level VKT (Vehicle Kilometres Travelled) model was developed using nonlinear regression analysis of VISTA dataset and other related information (ABS Census 2011 and land use spatial data), and validated using goodness of fit based on distribution of percentage of error in the predicted VKT. The approach enables us to investigate the likely impact of urban planning strategies and alternative growth scenarios that scale up from small areas of analysis, specifically, from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Statistical Area 1 (SA1) geographic unit to the larger Statistical Area 4 (SA4) and Metropolitan level (Greater Capital City Statistical Area, ABS). The results show that land use variables such as population density and distance from CBD, are associated with larger residential transport energy consumption, and is also correlated with socioeconomic variables such as dwelling type and income level, although further exploration and understanding of household travel behavior is needed to establish the impact of socioeconomic variables in the residential VKT.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationCUPUM 2017 International Conference on Computers in Urban Planning and Management – Conference Proceedings
Place of PublicationAdelaide, South Australia, Australia
PublisherUniversity of South Australia
Number of pages14
Publication statusPublished - 11 Jul 2017
Externally publishedYes
Event15th International Conference on Computers in Urban Planning and Urban Management - University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia
Duration: 11 Jul 201714 Jul 2017
Conference number: 15
http://www.unisa.edu.au/Education-Arts-and-Social-Sciences/Art-Architecture-and-Design/News-and-events/CUPUM/

Conference

Conference15th International Conference on Computers in Urban Planning and Urban Management
Abbreviated titleCUPUM 2017
Country/TerritoryAustralia
CityAdelaide
Period11/07/1714/07/17
Internet address

Keywords

  • Transport modeling
  • Scenario modelling
  • Energy calculation

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