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A COMPUTER SIMULATION MODEL--FOR ANALYZING MOBILE SOURCE AIR POLLUTION CONTROL STRATEGIES
Citation:
A COMPUTER SIMULATION MODEL--FOR ANALYZING MOBILE SOURCE AIR POLLUTION CONTROL STRATEGIES. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C., EPA/600/5-76/010.
Description:
This report describes MATHAIR, a computer model that simulates the impacts of strategies for controlling mobile source air pollutants. Vehicle miles traveled (VMT) for different modes of ground transportation are predicted by a transportation module. Given VMT predictions, an inventory of stationary sources of mobile source pollutants and certain other inputs for the urban area, pollutant emissions are calculated using EPA-developed relations. A linear rollback air quality module then predicts ambient pollutant concentrations. Finally strategy costs and benefits due to damage reduction are calculated. A set of experiments were performed for four selected urban regions using MATHAIR. MATHAIR casts all strategy costs (including the imputed social cost of trips foregone or induced by a strategy) and all benefits in dollar terms so that strategies can be compared in terms of their total impact. A baseline, zero control strategy and four strategies of increasing stringency are defined and simulated over a ten-year horizon. One general conclusion suggested by the results of the test is that it is economically inefficient to impose the same program of controls in different urban regions. Another conclusion is that the control strategies are very sensitive to certain input data.