Use of Geographic Information System Tools for Improving Mobile Source Atrmospheric Emission Inventories

Mobile source emissions are important inputs to photochemical air quality models. Since most mobile source emissions are calculated at the county-level, these emission should be geographically allocated to the computational grid cells of a photochemical air quality model prior to running the model. The traditional method for the spatial allocation of these emissions has been to use a "spatial surrogate indicator" such as population, since grid-specific emission calculations are very labor-intensive and expensive, plus the necessary data are often not available for such grid resolutions. Accordingly, new spatial surrogate indicators for mobile source emissions(specifically for highway emissions) were developed using Geographic Information Systems(GIS) tools due to the spatially variable nature of mobile source emissions. These newly developed spatial surrogate indicators appear to be more appropriate for the allocation of highway emissions than the population surrogate indicator. It was also revealed that the conventional spatial allocation method underestimates the maximum levels of air pollutant emmissions.mmissions.