Assessment of freight traffic flows and harmful emissions in euro-mediterranean context: scenario analyses based on a gravity model

Maritime transport contributes signifcantly to environmental pollution. The Mediterranean Sea Area is particularly afected by marine emissions from particulate matter, black carbon, nitrogen oxides and sulphur oxides. In addition to international and crossing trafc, the Mediterranean Sea is afected by the freight fows moved between its shores (in the North–South direction and vice versa), but also by transverse freight fows (East–West); these are freights transported through Short Sea Shipping. The Mediterranean Sea is the area where there is the highest concentration of short sea shipping in the EU-27. There are diferent types of Short Sea transport: container and bulk handling, general cargo ships and Ro-Ro transport. In such scenario, the analysis of trade fows as well as their spatial and geographical distribution, becomes fundamental. The paper proposes a gravity model for estimating trade fows, considering 18 countries boarding the Euro-Mediterranean Sea, in 2019. The proposed gravity model assumes that one of the main factors afecting trade is the economic dimension of a country which is directly related to the volume of imports and exports. In the paper, after a literature review on the gravity models, the illustration of the diferent phases investigation and construction of the database (specifcation, calibration and validation) to the defnition and implementation of the proposed model is proposed. Scenario analyses are therefore proposed for assessing the environmental impacts generated by maritime transport in the Mediterranean basin as the freight fows vary. The analyses are carried out using a simulation approach which, starting from hypotheses on the economic and social development trends of the countries of the southern shore, made it possible to evaluate the variations in terms of freight fows and environmental impacts in terms of pollution