Statistical evaluation of driving cycle with slope variability

Recently, the scientific community has assessed evidence that exposure to outdoor air pollution causes lung cancer and increases the risk of bladder cancer. Because air pollution in urban areas is mainly caused by transportation, it is necessary to evaluate pollutant exhaust emissions from vehicles during their real world use. Nevertheless, their evaluation and reduction is a key problem, especially in the cities, that account for more than 50 percent of world population. A correct evaluation of pollutant emissions and fuel consumption by vehicles in real use and precisely geolocated in a road is an important activity and it is still open in the international scientific contexts. Several experimental campaigns were carried out with some cars instrumented for both the acquisition of kinematic data, polluting emissions in continuous, and GPS latitude, longitude and altitude data for the correct geolocalization and slope variation during a path. In the context of qualitative and quantitative study of correlation between kinematic sequences/emission/geographical position, the aim of this paper is a statistical evaluation of the slope variability along streets during each journey performed by the instrumented vehicle. Therefore, through a multivariate statistical approach, this type of gradient analysis permits the correlation study of the emission profiles and consumption for a specific road position and the evaluation of the influence on their behavior.