Balancing Externalities and Industrial Costs in Air Quality Planning

When adopting regional plans aimed at improving air quality, environmental authorities are often faced with the relevant costs that the adoption of abatement measures implies. On the other hand, scientific literature has well documented damages due to air pollution impact on human health and ecosystems. This paper proposes a tool that allows balancing these two viewpoints by defining the efficient set of measures in a multi-objective perspective. Despite both external (health related) and internal (industrial/emission abatement related) costs can be measured in the same unit, namely money, it appears unacceptable to add them together as in a cost-benefit analysis, since they pertain to quite different social groups. The tool proposed in this paper can thus be seen as a support to actual decision makers and allows them to compare in a ponderable way the pros and cons of any abatement policy. This contrasts what normally happens when air quality health impacts are simply defined as the satisfaction of a constraint at few specific points in space (coincident with the presence of measurement gauges). Indeed, both population and ecosystems are distributed in a non-uniform way on a territory and thus sparse point measurements of pollutant concentrations or other related air quality indicators may be only loosely related with the real impacts of air quality. An application of the tool to a European region (Lombardy, Italy) is presented with particular reference to PM10 and Ozone pollution problems. These are particularly difficult to cope with, since these pollutants are mainly formed in the atmosphere (secondary pollutants) and thus their concentration depends on chemical physical processes involving in different way on one side the emission of precursors and, on the other, the local meteorological conditions.JRC.H.2-Air and Climat

Methods for Regional Integrated Assessment: High resolution gridded emission distribution in the LUISA Platform

This report illustrates the progresses made towards the inclusion of air quality related issues in the Land Use-based Integrated Sustainability Assessment (LUISA) platform. It focuses on the description of the methodology to derive high-resolution gridded-emission spatially geo-referenced layers from outputs and datasets integrated in LUISA. In the framework of the integration of the Regional Integrated Assessment Tool (RIAT model) and the Land Use Modelling Integrated Sustainability Assessment (LUISA) platform, we implemented the downscaling of atmospheric emission data from national level to very high spatial resolution (100m). The GAINS model (IIASA) provides the input emission data for different scenarios, up to year 2030, which are disaggregated based on 34 different surrogates. Each surrogate is calculated by means of the integration of several proxies derived by statistical datasets, ancillary models and GIS layers in the framework of the LUISA platform. The preliminary results for NOx, PM10 and NH3 (year 2010) are presented in this report together with their first assessment, based on existing emission maps at 7 and 10 Km resolution. Future steps for further refinements are also discussed.JRC.H.8-Sustainability Assessmen

VALIDATION OF MESOSCALE METEOROLOGICAL SIMULATION OVER PO VALLEY FOR AIR QUALITY APPLICATIONS

Very high ground level concentrations of PM in winter and of ozone in summer often occur in Northern Italy, due to the high anthropogenic emissions and frequent stagnant meteorological conditions that characterize the area. These problems are not only related to urban, but also to suburban areas through the entire Po Valley. In such a situation it is important to use deterministic Chemical Transport Models, that allows to evaluate the effect of different air quality control policies on secondary pollution concentrations. Chemical Transport Models generally are part of more complex deterministic modelling systems, encompassing also emission models, meteorological models, and initial and boundary condition processors. Meteorological models are an important module of deterministic modelling systems and, due to their complexity, require high computational costs to perform simulations. In fact they solve a full set of non-hydrostatic equations that describe atmospheric dynamics and thermodynamics, and conservation equations, usually considering two-way interacting nested domains. Within the HPC-EUROPA (Pan-European Research Infrastructure on High Performance Computing) cooperation project, that allows to use clusters of CPUs all around Europe, the meteorological fields over Northern Italy were simulated using RAMS4.4 in parallel mode, creating a database for future air quality assessments. In the present work a CPUs cluster of the Italian computing centre CINECA have been used. The meteorological simulations have been performed considering three nested grids. The first grid covers an area that encompasses the entire Europe, the second grid is focused on Mediterranean sea, while the third one is limited to the Po Valley area. The spatial resolution of the three grids is respectively 128 km, 32 km and 8 km. The number of cells for the three grids is respectively 40x40, 86x86 and 102x102, with 33 vertical levels covering the domain from surface to roughly 20 km height. The entire 2004 year has been simulated through 72 simulations of 126 hours each, considering a spin-up time of 6 hours and 16 CPUs each simulation. In this paper the model configuration and the validation of the simulated meteorological fields are presented

Policy pressures on air

This report analyses the main sectors involved in air pollution generation and provides a first assessment and prioritisation of the main ongoing or foreseeable structural changes that may pose a threat to the European air quality in Europe. In particular the following questions have been addressed with the support of selected experts: "Is it true that there are regulatory aspects that could result in slowing down of the decrease in air pollutants emissions, or even potentially leading to their increase?" "If so, is it possible to identify one or more specific issues, maybe related to structural sectorial changes, that needs to be addressed?" "For these key issues, is it possible to quantify (or at least estimate) the unintended impact on air quality in order to prioritise appropriate countermeasures?"JRC.C.5-Air and Climat

A multi-pollutant and multi-sectorial approach to screening the consistency of emission inventories

Some studies show that significant uncertainties affect emission inventories, which may impeach conclusions based on air-quality model results. These uncertainties result from the need to compile a wide variety of information to estimate an emission inventory. In this work, we propose and discuss a screening method to compare two emission inventories, with the overall goal of improving the quality of emission inventories by feeding back the results of the screening to inventory compilers who can check the inconsistencies found and, where applicable, resolve errors. The method targets three different aspects: (1) the total emissions assigned to a series of large geographical areas, countries in our application; (2) the way these country total emissions are shared in terms of sector of activity; and (3) the way inventories spatially distribute emissions from countries to smaller areas, cities in our application. The first step of the screening approach consists of sorting the data and keeping only emission contributions that are relevant enough. In a second step, the method identifies, among those significant differences, the most important ones that provide evidence of methodological divergence and/or errors that can be found and resolved in at least one of the inventories. The approach has been used to compare two versions of the CAMS-REG European-scale inventory over 150 cities in Europe for selected activity sectors. Among the 4500 screened pollutant sectors, about 450 were kept as relevant, among which 46 showed inconsistencies. The analysis indicated that these inconsistencies arose almost equally from large-scale reporting and spatial distribution differences. They mostly affect SO2 and PM coarse emissions from the industrial and residential sectors. The screening approach is general and can be used for other types of applications related to emission inventories.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Sensitivity Analysis of the SHERPA Air Quality Model

Uncertainty and sensitivity analysis was conducted on the SHERPA model, predicting air quality improvement linked to emission reduction scenarios. Major responsible of output uncertainty (PM2.5 concentration reductions in g/m3) stems from the uncertainty in the policy options followed by the uncertainty in the emissions (kTon/year) of PPM, NOX, and NH3.JRC.I.1-Modelling, Indicators and Impact Evaluatio

Emissions of Carbonaceous Particulate Matter and Ultrafine Particles from Vehicles-A Scientific Review in a Cross-Cutting Context of Air Pollution and Climate Change

Featured Application Key conclusions and recommendations are proposed to enlighten decision makers in view of the next regulations on vehicle emissions in Europe and worldwide through the synergistic contexts of air quality and climate change. Airborne particulate matter (PM) is a pollutant of concern not only because of its adverse effects on human health but also on visibility and the radiative budget of the atmosphere. PM can be considered as a sum of solid/liquid species covering a wide range of particle sizes with diverse chemical composition. Organic aerosols may be emitted (primary organic aerosols, POA), or formed in the atmosphere following reaction of volatile organic compounds (secondary organic aerosols, SOA), but some of these compounds may partition between the gas and aerosol phases depending upon ambient conditions. This review focuses on carbonaceous PM and gaseous precursors emitted by road traffic, including ultrafine particles (UFP) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) that are clearly linked to the evolution and formation of carbonaceous species. Clearly, the solid fraction of PM has been reduced during the last two decades, with the implementation of after-treatment systems abating approximately 99% of primary solid particle mass concentrations. However, the role of brown carbon and its radiative effect on climate and the generation of ultrafine particles by nucleation of organic vapour during the dilution of the exhaust remain unclear phenomena and will need further investigation. The increasing role of gasoline vehicles on carbonaceous particle emissions and formation is also highlighted, particularly through the chemical and thermodynamic evolution of organic gases and their propensity to produce particles. The remaining carbon-containing particles from brakes, tyres and road wear will still be a problem even in a future of full electrification of the vehicle fleet. Some key conclusions and recommendations are also proposed to support the decision makers in view of the next regulations on vehicle emissions worldwide

A Framework for Integrated Assessment Modelling

“Air quality plans” according to Air Quality Directive 2008/50/EC Art. 23 are the strategic element to be developed, with the aim to reliably meet ambient air quality standards in a cost-effective way. This chapter provides a general framework to develop and assess such plans along the lines of the European Commission’s basic ideas to implement effective emission reduction measures at local, region, and national level. This methodological point of view also allows to analyse the existing integrated approaches