Grantee Research Project Results
2005 Progress Report: Advanced Modeling System for Forecasting Regional Development, Travel Behavior, and Spatial Pattern of Emissions
EPA Grant Number: R831835Title: Advanced Modeling System for Forecasting Regional Development, Travel Behavior, and Spatial Pattern of Emissions
Investigators: Rodriguez, Daniel , Frey, H. Christopher , Morton, Brian J. , Khattak, Asad , Huntsinger, Leta , Rouphail, Nagui , Song, Yan
Current Investigators: Rodriguez, Daniel , Hanna, Adel , Frey, H. Christopher , Morton, Brian J. , Khattak, Asad , Rouphail, Nagui , Arunachalam, Sarav , Song, Yan
Institution: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill , North Carolina State University
EPA Project Officer: Chung, Serena
Project Period: September 1, 2004 through November 14, 2009
Project Period Covered by this Report: September 1, 2004 through November 14, 2005
Project Amount: $680,000
RFA: Regional Development, Population Trend, and Technology Change Impacts on Future Air Pollution Emissions (2004) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Air , Climate Change
Objective:
The objective of this research project is to test rigorously, through simulation modeling of land use, transportation, emissions, and air quality, the hypothesis that regional development patterns significantly affect the quantity and spatial distribution of mobile source emissions that contribute to health-damaging tropospheric ozone and fine particulate matter (PM). The research team includes social scientists, physical scientists, and engineers, who are developing a simulation model with land use, travel behavior, and emissions components. The model is being developed with recent data for Charlotte, North Carolina; Mecklenburg County, North Carolina; and the multicounty Metrolina region. The scenarios that we will assess with the simulation model will include a baseline and projections for various land use patterns, vehicle technologies, and transportation systems. The final output of the simulation model will be spatially distributed emission projections for multiple scenarios. In turn, concentrations of ozone and PM will be projected for several scenarios with the Models 3/Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) modeling system.
Progress Summary:
Transportation Network
Development, testing, and documentation are complete for a procedure for importing highway and transit networks from TransCAD into TRANUS, the platform for developing the simulation model. In addition, networks were cleaned and edited, zone-to-zone highway travel time and distance impedances were determined, and an equivalency table for handling speeds and capacities was developed.
Neighborhood Transect, Land Use, and Travel Behavior
Development of the Neighborhood Transect, which will describe neighborhood types for land use and travel modeling, began with the extraction of a series of urban form and related attributes from the spatial datasets provided by Charlotte-area project partners. Factor analysis performed on the compiled spatial and urban form data generated eight factors to classify neighborhoods: (1) density; (2) centrality; (3) green space; (4) property values; (5) access to commerce; (6) access to transit; (7) mixed land uses; and (8) access to highways. Data on personal travel behavior, neighborhood and individual attributes, and geographic information system (GIS) shapefiles describing land use have been prepared for modeling, and model specification nearly is complete. Travel behavior and auto ownership models have been specified to be consistent with the residential location model and the data prepared for modeling.
Emissions
During Year 1 of the project, the team used data gathered previously by portable emission measurement systems (PEMS) from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, North Carolina Department of Transportation, and National Science Foundation studies to develop synthetic distributions of vehicle specific power (VSP) based on average speed, road class, and vehicle class. These distributions made it possible to develop and synthesize representative speed profiles. Emission modeling (using a VSP binning approach) is complete for light-duty gasoline vehicles on several road classes, for transit buses on arterials, and for heavy-duty vehicles on several road classes. Additional PEMS data collection will fill gaps on hybrid vehicles and light-duty diesel vehicles. The findings to date indicate the feasibility of estimating emissions from macrosimulation models such as TRANUS. To our knowledge, such direct linkage of land use, travelers’ behavior, roadway infrastructure, vehicle technologies, and in-use emission factors, as enabled by the TRANUS model, is unprecedented.
Future Activities:
Cluster analysis will yield a typology of neighborhoods for use as an input variable in the location and travel behavior models. The models of travel behavior, auto ownership, residential location, and business location will be completed. In-depth discussions with local planners and a visioning exercise that engages elected officials, developers, and community leaders, in addition to planners, will provide the foundation for developing the regional development scenarios.
In 2006, the emissions team plans to: (1) fill gaps in emission measurements using PEMS (for hybrids, light-duty diesel vehicles, etc.); (2) gather additional data from the literature or parallel research from the United States and Europe, particularly on alternative-fuel vehicles; (3) develop an interface between the land use-transportation model and the vehicular emissions module, estimate emission inventories, and conduct an uncertainty analysis; and (4) develop land use-transportation scenarios looking 50 years into the future, consistent with the scenarios of the International Panel on Climate Change. We will develop a procedure for transforming the emissions estimated with TRANUS and the vehicular emissions module into a model-ready emission inventory suitable for CMAQ.
Journal Articles:
No journal articles submitted with this report: View all 44 publications for this projectSupplemental Keywords:
air quality model, alternative vehicle technology, ambient air pollution, PEMS, emissions monitoring, mobile source emissions, modeling, regional emissions model, traffic patterns,, RFA, Scientific Discipline, Ecosystem Protection/Environmental Exposure & Risk, Air, PHYSICAL ASPECTS, Physical Processes, Urban and Regional Planning, Atmosphere, Monitoring/Modeling, Air Pollution Effects, climate change, Environmental Monitoring, human exposue, air quality, climate model, atmospheric pollutant loads, ecosystem models, Global Climate Change, mobile source emissions, ecological models, emissions monitoring, motor vehicle emissions, Emissions Inventory Modeling System, global warming, mobile sources, climate variability, community structure, green house gas concentrations, air quality model, exposure, human activities, ozone concentrations, tropospheric ozone, land use model, ozone , ambient air pollution, infrastructure systems, alternative vehicle technology, modeling, predicting ecological response, regional emissions modelRelevant Websites:
Progress and Final Reports:
Original AbstractThe perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.