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Quantifying the effects of input aggregation and model randomness on regional transportation emission inventories

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Abstract

Accurate road-traffic emission inventories are of great interest to metropolitan planning agencies especially in the appraisal of regional transport policies. Integrated road transport emission models are an effective means of establishing emission estimates, yet their development requires significant investments in data and resources. It is therefore important to investigate which data inputs are the most critical to inventory accuracy. To address this issue, an integrated transport and emissions model is developed using the Montreal metropolitan region as a case-study. Daily regional hydrocarbon (HC) emissions from private individual travel are estimated, including the excess emissions due to engine starts. The sensitivity of emission estimates is then evaluated by testing various levels of input aggregation common in practice and in previous research. The evaluated inputs include the effect of start emissions, ambient weather conditions, traffic speed, path choice, and vehicle registry information. Inherent randomness within the integrated model through vehicle selection and path allocation is also evaluated. The inclusion of start emissions is observed to have the largest impact on emission inventories, contributing approximately 67 % of total on-road HC emissions. Ambient weather conditions (season) and vehicle registry data (types, model years) are also found to be significant. Model randomness had a minimal effect in comparison with the impact of other variables.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering and Applied Mechanics, McGill University, Macdonald Engineering Building, 817 Sherbrooke St. W., Room 492, Montréal, QC, H3A 2K6, Canada

    Timothy Sider, Gabriel Goulet-Langlois & Marianne Hatzopoulou

  2. Department of Civil, Environmental and Construction Engineering, University of Central Florida, 12800 Pegasus Drive, Room 301D, Orlando, FL, 32816, USA

    Naveen Eluru

Authors
  1. Timothy Sider
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  2. Gabriel Goulet-Langlois
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  3. Naveen Eluru
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  4. Marianne Hatzopoulou
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Correspondence to Marianne Hatzopoulou.

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Sider, T., Goulet-Langlois, G., Eluru, N. et al. Quantifying the effects of input aggregation and model randomness on regional transportation emission inventories. Transportation 43, 315–335 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-015-9577-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-015-9577-2

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