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SPECIATE Version 5.0 Database Development Documentation
Citation:
Divita, F., M. Menetrez, M. Strum, AND H. Ying. SPECIATE Version 5.0 Database Development Documentation. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/600/R-19/099, 2019.
Impact/Purpose:
SPECIATE is the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) repository of speciation profiles of air pollution sources that provide the species makeup or composition of organic gas, particulate matter (PM) and other pollutants emitted from these sources. Some of the many uses of these source profiles include: (1) creating speciated emissions inventories for regional haze, PM, greenhouse gas (GHG), and photochemical air quality modeling; (2) developing black carbon assessments and particulate carbonaceous inventories (3) estimating air toxic pollutant emissions from PM and organic gas primary emissions; (4) providing input to chemical mass balance (CMB) receptor models; and, (5) verifying profiles derived from ambient measurements by multivariate receptor models (e.g., factor analysis and positive matrix factorization).
Description:
The maintenance of SPECIATE requires continuous assessment. EPA SWG members have established a process to identify and prioritize need, find sound research sources which address that need, critically review those sources, and finally add that data to SPECIATE. This rigorous attention to maintaining quality and relevance has established SPECIATE as a uniquely positioned source of information for air quality analysts, modelers, researchers, specialists, as well as interested public officials and individuals. EPA routinely uses SPECIATE data for development of air quality modeling platforms and for the National Emissions Inventory (NEI). For the NEI, SPECIATE data are used to estimate black carbon (elemental carbon) emissions and other species of PM and to estimate hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) for some source categories. SPECIATE 3.2, released in 2002, was the first electronic version, a Microsoft Access® database. Periodically, EPA releases an updated version of SPECIATE that adds data to previous versions of the Microsoft Access® database. EPA also provides the data in a browser tool to allow users to browse and download profile information without the need to use Microsoft Access®. EPA is now releasing SPECIATE 5.0.