Transition of Personal Transport Activity Systems

Since 2003 the Advanced Energy and Material Systems Lab (AEMSLab) at the University of Canterbury has been working on the problem of the long term future of our cities beyond petroleum, and the projects of shifting, adapting and re-developing our cities. 

Burnside 2100

The first project was the "Burnside" project. The question was - what would the city of Christchurch be like in 100 years when people just like us were living there, but with less than 5% of the liquid fuels we now use?  That is a good question. 

Here is a video describing the project result  Deep Green Shift

Risk to Essential Activities Transport Systems (RECATS)

We all know that our cities would not work without oil. The questions is - What parts of the city are fully functional without oil, which would lose some functions and which are at risk of not being able to do any activities without oil?  The point is that if you could assess the energy accessibility of the areas of the city, you could make infrastructure investments and land use decisions that improved accessibility and adaptability. 

Here is the full report describing the modelling approach and results applied to Christchurch, New Zealand  NZTA Report 331

personal transport activity adaptive capacity (taca)

If you analyze the elasticity of petroleum use to fuel price it looks like we will pay anything to fill our cars. But that only holds if the fuel is available. This project developed a sim-game type computer program that helps people to understand how they use transportation and to explore their options. Their exploration of options lets us measure the transport adaptive capacity for people in different circumstances in different parts of any city. 

Here is the full report describing the survey design and approach and results for Dunedin, Christchurch and Oamaru, New Zealand NZTA Report 486



Peak Oil