Good day my good friend.
Unlike other publications I will refrain from making lettauce puns. You can be assured that I romaine committed to the upmost professional integrity. I wouldn’t be so cress as to try and Mache the pure pun power of the British tabloids. Ok, that’s it, I swear. I’m not trying to Butter you up. I will stop now.
If you have any suggestions for interesting news items or bits of research to include in this newsletter, you can email me.
James
Identifying vulnerable infrastructure on the (relative) cheap
Climate change. Very bad, particularly for coastal infrastructure. For hundreds of years us humans had a habit of building near water, and now that the water will be coming for us, we need to protect our infrastructure more. To do that, we need better intelligence on what is vulnerable both ahead of time, but also at short notice when something like a Hurricane comes to town. Which is very important when planning evacuation routes.
Doing so cheaply is a challenge. But we already have all sorts of equipment and resources that can help. Such as the humble satellite image, which this research used alongside open GIS data to assess vulnerability of roads before Hurricane Michael hit Florida. The model was particularly clever as it analysed tree cover to help assess vulnerability. There were model challenges, but this example of automating analysis could be very useful in future years, so we can save lives and stop our towns and cities sliding into the sea.
New data states the obvious, but that’s not a bad thing
Yesterday, the Department for Transport published just about the only thing that it can publish right now: statistics. This time, on the environmental impact of transport and comparisons between different modes. The headlines are to be expected (cars bad, public transport good). But the detail in the data is what is interesting here.
For example, in 2020 there were high degrees of variability of carbon emissions from transport at the local authority level. Live in Cornwall or Central Bedfordshire (I do) – you are bad. Live in rural Wales or the South Coast of England? Its all good. On a positive note, while there are still plenty of problems with air pollution, progress has been made over the last 20 years.
Random things
These links are meant to make you think about the things that affect our world in transport, and not just think about transport itself. I hope that you enjoy them.
Fast charging of energy-dense lithium-ion batteries (Nature)
The big sovereign carbon trade (Carbon Risk)
Police Guard LNG Ports as Germany Fast-tracks Critical Infrastructure Law (Maritime Logistics Professional)
Sentience and Sensibility (The Baffler)
Something interesting
That is a lot of metal. But its interesting to note all of the largest end uses for for all the metals that we mined. Transport uses every single one of them.
If you do nothing else today, do this
Check out the r/f**kcars Subreddit tearing into a Canadian politician. Their comments in summary: don’t show me a good time. Some good internet humour.
Mobility Matters 