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Abstract To reduce traffic congestion and protect the environment, license plate control (LPC) policy has been implemented in Beijing since 2011. In 2019, 100,000 vehicle license plates were distributed, including 60,000 for electric vehicles (EVs) and 40,000 for gasoline vehicle (GVs). However, whether the current license plate allocation is optimal from a social welfare maximization perspective remains unclear. This paper proposes a two-level Stackelberg game, which portrays the interaction between vehicle applicants and the government to quantify the optimal number of EV license plates under the LPC policy in Beijing. The equilibrium number of EV license plates derived from the Stackelberg model is 58,800, which could increase the social welfare by 0.38%. Sensitivity analysis is conducted to illustrate the impact of important influential factors — total license plate quota, vehicle rental fee, and energy price — on EV adoption. The LPC policy under COVID-19 is also studied through a scenario analysis. If the government additionally increases the total quota by 20,000, 24% could be allocated to GV and 76% to EV. One third reduction of the current vehicle rental fee could increase EV license plates by 10.5%. In terms of energy prices, when gasoline price is low, reducing electricity prices could contribute to EV adoption significantly, while that effect tapers off as gasoline prices increase.

The COVID-19 pandemic has translated in different countries into a variable mix of measures that all had impacts on urban economies and logistics activities. Goods managed to maintain a high level of mobility, thus guaranteeing the supply of cities and limiting the possible effects of shortages. Urban supply chains adapted well to rapidly changing consumption behaviors (one in three consumers who made online food purchases during the first lockdowns in Europe were new to this channel) and changes in supplies to industrial sectors. In the public eye (governments, media, the general public), logistics has become an essential activity and while it has always been strategic for cities, it has become much more visible. To report on these changes, this chapter presents a review of the already quite substantial scientific literature on COVID-19 and freight, develops the case study of Paris, France and discusses policy issues and future directions related to urban logistics and COVID-19.

During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, some French regions were more affected than others. To relieve those areas most affected, the French government organized transfers of critical patients, notably by plane or helicopter. Our objective was to investigate the impact of such transfers on the pulse oximetric saturation (SpO2)-to-inspired fraction of oxygen (FiO2) ratio among transferred critical patients with COVID-19. We conducted a retrospective study on medical and paramedical records. The primary endpoint was the change in SpO2/FiO2 during transfers. Thirty-eight patients were transferred between 28 March and 5 April 2020, with a mean age of 62.4 years and a mean body mass index of 29.8 kg/m2. The population was 69.7% male, and the leading medical history was hypertension (42.1%), diabetes (34.2%), and dyslipidemia (18.4%). Of 28 patients with full data, we found a decrease of 28.9 points in SpO2/FiO2 (95% confidence interval, 5.8 to 52.1, p = 0.01) between the starting and the arrival intensive care units (SpO2/FiO2, 187.3 ± 61.3 and 158.4 ± 62.8 mmHg, respectively). Air medical transfers organized to relieve intensive care unit teams under surging conditions during the first COVID wave were associated with significant decreases in arterial oxygenation.

Part 5: Autonomous Agents; International audience; Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) can potentially reduce the accident risk while a human is driving. They can also improve the public transportation by connecting city centers with main mass transit systems. The development of technologies that can provide a sense of security to the passenger when the driver is missing remains a challenging task. Moreover, such technologies are forced to adopt to the new reality formed by the COVID-19 pandemic, as it has created significant restrictions to passenger mobility through public transportation. In this work, an image-based approach, supported by novel AI algorithms, is proposed as a service to increase autonomy of non-fully autonomous people such as kids, grandparents and disabled people. The proposed real-time service, can identify family members via facial characteristics and efficiently ignore face masks, while providing notifications for their condition to their supervisor relatives. The envisioned AI-supported security framework, apart from enhancing the trust to autonomous mobility, could be advantageous in other applications also related to domestic security and defense.

Smart mobility is poised to cause a socio-economic transition of transportation systems in cities (Garau et al., 2016; Lyons, 2018). As part of this transition, Automated Vehicles (AV) integration in public transport requires further investigation regarding the implications on the transport ecosystem (González-González et al., 2020). This has also become a prime concern because of the current Covid-19 situation. Indeed, the guidelines to restrict the pandemic that shrunk the global economy by 4.4% in 2020 have caused acute disruptions in public transport (The world bank 2020). The pandemic crisis also highlighted the vulnerabilities of the public transport ecosystem. It became more crucial to ensure accessible, safe, and reliable services (Liu et al., 2020; Jenelius and Cebecauer 2020). Thus, automated minibuses could provide a solution to the unsustainability of the transport sector and increase public transport competitiveness. Indeed, the introduction of on-demand, door-to-door, shared automated vehicles could reduce car-ownership, impact travel behaviour, enhance public transport services, and eventually lead to smart and livable cities (Nogués et al., 2020). To better ensure that this mode of transport achieves its potential, key stakeholders should be equipped with the tools to guide them in embedding the automated minibus in the future city (Medina-Tapia and Robusté 2019).This paper suggests possible future scenarios future scenarios of automated minibuses deployment and calculates the environmental impact through externalities caused by these modal shifts (from traditional transport to automated minibuses).Thus, the research tries to answer the question: What is the potential impact of the transition from traditional transport to new mobility (automated minibuses) in European cities?

International audience; The outbreak of COVID-19 has made a global catastrophic situation that caused 1,039,406 deaths out of 35,347,404 infections, and it will also cause significant socio-economic losses with poverty increasing from 17.1 to 25.9%. Although the spreading rate of COVID-19 is very high on October 6, 2020, the death rate is still less than 2.94%. Nonetheless, this review article shows that the lockdown has induced numerous positive impacts on the environment and on energy consumption. For instance, the lockdown has decreased the electricity demand by 30% in Italy, India, Germany, and the USA, and by 12–20% in France, Germany, Spain, India, and the UK. Additionally, the expenditure of the fuel supply has been decreased by 4% in 2020 as compared to the previous years (2012–2019). In particular, The global demand for coal fuel has been reduced by 8% in March and April 2020 as compared to the same time in 2019. In terms of harmful emissions, the lockdowns reduced the emissions of nitrous oxides by 20–30% in China, Italy, France, Spain, and by 77.3% in São Paulo, Brazil. Similarly, the particulate matter level has been reduced from 5–15% in Western Europe, to 200% in New Delhi, India, which in turn has enhanced the air quality in a never-seen manner in recent times. In some places, such as New York, USA, CO2 emission was also reduced by 5–10%. The water quality, in several polluted areas, has also been remarkably enhanced, for example, the dissolved oxygen content in the Ganga River, India, has increased by about 80%. Traffic congestion has also been reduced worldwide, and in some areas, it has been reduced by 50%, such as New York and Los Angeles, USA. Overall, while the COVID-19 pandemic has shrinked the global economy by 13–32%, the pandemic has also clearly benefited to other sectors, which must be considered as the spotlight for the permanent revival of the global ecosystem.

During the era of COVID-19 (COronaVIrus Disease of 2019), telework has been adopted extensively in developing countries for the first time. This study analyzes data of 355 teleworkers in Hanoi (Vietnam) during April 2020, the period of social distancing, to examine various factors associated with (1) complete home-based telework (HBT), (2) the perception of HBT, and (3) the attitude toward the combination between HBT and conventional work at workplace post-COVID-19. It finds that the company's closure policy and the frequency of working from a distance before the social distancing period were the primary determinants of exclusively teleworking. Regarding the perception of HBT, while the fear of COVID-19 was a strong positive factor, difficulties in focusing on work and accessing data were negative factors. Regarding the attitude toward the future development of HBT, attitudinal factors, commute distance, gender, children in household, and the perception of HBT in the social distancing period were the main predictors. The presence of more than one child negatively affected the perception of telework but positively affected the attitude toward establishing the hybrid work mechanism. The findings suggested that HBT has the potential to alleviate traffic congestion in developing countries and it can be promoted by emphasizing its environment-related benefits. The sample used in this research was collected in the initial stage of constrained mobility and it was not well representative; therefore, this study serves as a proof of concept for ongoing wider analyses on HBT post-COVID-19 or in the subsequent lockdown periods.

Depuis la Convention de Chicago en 1944, l'industrie du transport aérien a maintenu une forte dynamique de croissance, malgré les fluctuations du marché à court terme, dont la dernière a été la pandémie de COVID-19. Cette croissance, soutenue par le développement économique et touristique mondial, s’est traduite par des flux d’échange de services sur le marché international. Les compagnies aériennes dont la stratégie de développement touristique reposait auparavant sur l’intégration verticale et horizontale, se sont tournées vers de nouvelles stratégies basées sur la différenciation et les coûts comparatifs. En effet, la déréglementation dans le transport aérien a joué un rôle clé dans la création de nouvelles dessertes et l’augmentation de la concurrence entre les compagnies sur le marché international. Cette concurrence a favorisé l’émergence de nouvelles stratégies touristiques qui ont participé au développement du tourisme mondial. Since the Chicago Convention in 1944, the airline industry has maintained strong growth momentum, despite short-term market fluctuations, the latest of which was the COVID-19 pandemic. This growth, supported by global economic and tourism development, has resulted in the exchange of services on the international market. Air companies, whose tourism development strategy was previously based on vertical and horizontal integration, have turned to new strategies based on differentiation and comparative costs. Indeed, deregulation in air transport has played a crucial role in creating new routes and increasing competition between airlines in the international market. This competition has encouraged the emergence of new tourism strategies that have contributed to world tourism development.

Abstract. In developing countries, metropolitan cities, due to their economic activities, attract an increasing amount of commuters on a daily basis. This has led to major freeways and roads experiencing high levels of congestion and consequently high pollution levels. In 2020, due to a global pandemic of an outbreak of Corona Virus (COVID-19), the national government declared a national shutdown with only essential traffic being allowed to operate. Given the scenario of the national lock-down this allows for the statistical analysis of the impact of essential traffic on the overall transportation system. Consequently the aim of the paper was to assess the congestion and CO2 emission impact of essential traffic for the City of Johannesburg. Using an exploratory approach, we monitored and collected traffic congestion data from the Tomtom traffic index for the metropolitan city of Johannesburg, South Africa. We develop a relationship between congestion and pollution to visualise the daily variations in pollution and congestion levels. We demonstrate this by comparing variations in congestion levels in two epochs, viz the period without movement restrictions and the period whereby movement is restricted. The results reveal essential traffic on the congestion index to be below 22 percent for both weekends and weekdays. A scenario common only during weekends in 2019. Whilst for the emission index, CO2 levels are approximately less than 45 percent throughout the week. The paper concludes the investment into mining and analysing traffic data has a significantly role for future mobility planning in both the developed and developing world and, more generally, improving the quality of commuting trips in the city.

L' apparition du Covid-19 en tant qu'urgence sanitaire mondiale et la crise socio-économique qui en résulte mettent à l'épreuve les structures mondiales de coopération. Ces défis donnent naissance à de nouvelles formes et expressions de solidarité transnational.