HI-CAM: Helmholtz Climate Initiative
The Helmholtz Climate Initiative (in short: HI-CAM) consists of two research clusters: 1) Mitigation und 2) Adaptation. Mitigation encompasses four research projects that aim at developing strategies to make Germany CO2-neutral by 2050. In contrast, the nine research projects that belong to the Adaptation cluster investigate how society has to adapt to the impact of climate change in different areas.
Project
The mobility project constitutes one of the nine research projects belonging to the Adaptation cluster. It investigates the potential impact of climate change on mobility in passenger and freight transport as well as in urban spaces in particular. For this purpose, the relationship between weather conditions and mobility behaviour is analysed on the basis of transport models. Different scenarios are modelled to shed light on the impact of future weather conditions that can be expected due to climate change on the overall mileage of the transport system and on peoples’ mobility.
In addition, it is analysed how alternative fuels and drivetrains could contribute to lower emissions in the transport sector. For this purpose, different diffusion rates of battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids in the passenger vehicle fleet are considered. This allows for modeling the impact of these technologies on the emissions caused by the transport sector.
The mobility project is led by the Institute of Transport Research that is responsible for the numerical modeling and the development of policy recommendations based on the results.
Objectives
The main objectives of the project are
the investigation of future mobility under changed climatic conditions and weather extremes,
the quantification of mobility, emissions, and energy consumption under such conditions, and
the development of policy recommendations for adaption.
Approach
First, weather conditions such as air temperature, precipitation, and wind speed have to be integrated into transport models on the basis of data of the German Weather Service. The models will be adapted so that local weather conditions prevailing at the beginning of a trip are taken in to account in the choice of the mode of transport. Once the transport models are adapted in this way, they can be used for modeling mobility behavior under weather conditions that are expected to be brought about by climate change in the future.
This is done in cooperation with climate scientists of the Climate Service Center Germany (GERICS) who provide the expectable future weather conditions for the use in the transport models on the basis of different climate scenarios („Representative Concentrations Pathways“) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In this way the direct impacts of climate change on mobility behaviour are modeled without considering other societal developments.
The model outputs are then used to develop policy recommendations that aim at reducing or avoiding negative impact of climate change on mobility behaviour while fostering positive ones.
Contracting entity
The project is financed by the Helmholtz Association.
Project partners
Altogether 15 out of 19 Helmholtz-Centres take part in the Helmholtz Climate Initiative. The mobility project encompasses the following research institutes:
Institute of Transport Research
Institute of Vehicle Concepts
The German Remote Sensing Data Centre
Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research
Project duration
07/2019 to 12/2021