Transport is an essential sector in modern societies. It connects economic
sectors and industries. Next to its contribution to economic development and social
interconnection, it also causes adverse impacts on the environment and results in
health hazards. Transport is a major source of ground air pollution, especially in urban
areas, and therefore contributing to the health problems, such as cardiovascular and
respiratory diseases, cancer, and physical injuries.
This thesis presents the results of a health risk assessment that quantifies the
mortality and the diseases associated with particulate matter pollution resulting from
urban road transport in Hai Phong City, Vietnam. The focus is on the integration of
modelling and GIS approaches in the exposure analysis to increase the accuracy of the
assessment and to produce timely and consistent assessment results. The modelling
was done to estimate traffic conditions and concentrations of particulate matters
based on geo-references data. A simplified health risk assessment was also done for
Ha Noi based on monitoring data that allows a comparison of the results between the
two cases. The results of the case studies show that health risk assessment based on
modelling data can provide a much more detail results and allows assessing health
impacts of different mobility development options at micro level.
The use of modeling and GIS as a common platform for the integration of
different assessments (environmental, health, socio-economic, etc.) provides various
strengths, especially in capitalising on the available data stored in different units and
forms and allows handling large amount of data. The use of models and GIS in a health
risk assessment, from a decision making point of view, can reduce the
processing/waiting time while providing a view at different scales: from micro scale
(sections of a city) to a macro scale. It also helps visualising the links between air
quality and health outcomes which is useful discussing different development options.
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However, a number of improvements can be made to further advance the
integration. An improved integration programme of the data will facilitate the
application of integrated models in policy-making. Data on mobility survey,
environmental monitoring and measuring must be standardised and legalised. Various
traffic models, together with emission and dispersion models, should be tested and
more attention should be given to their uncertainty and sensitivity.