Speaker(s)

Dr. Philine Gaffron, Fellow of the German Research Foundation (DFG), Project 'Urban Transport and Environmental Justice', Visiting Researcher, ITS-Davis

Abstract

Environmental justice is not well established as a criterion for public decision making in Germany. However, current EU legislation has obliged local authorities to model and map emissions of noise, PM 10 and nitrogen dioxide in their administrative areas in order to assess the need for mitigation measures where legal limits are exceeded. In combination with the nascent interest in how exposure to environmental burdens differs between different groups of the population, this provides a good opportunity to look more systematically at urban transport emissions and environmental justice (EJ). Thanks to a fellowship from the German Research Foundation, I will be able to spend the next two years at UC Davis in order to study the interconnections between emissions from urban road transport, human daily activity patterns and residential location choice. My aim for this research is threefold: a) I want to learn more about the relevant tools and findings from the U.S. perspective, b) I am planning to investigate and document the transferability of these to German contexts and c) I would like to contribute to the body of research in California through the investigation of local case studies. I will present some of my work from Germany as well as my research plan for the current project. And I am hoping for the opportunity to find out in what way my research can complement other work going on at ITS in order to create synergies and identify possibilities for collaboration.