Comparison of road traffic emission factors and testing by comparison of modelled and measured ambient air quality data

Abstract

This paper describes a comparison of three different sets of road traffic emission factors released by the UK government for use in air quality review and assessment. The air quality management process of review and assessment began in 1997 in the UK. During this period of ongoing review and assessment, a number of changes have been made to the emission factors provided by the government. The use of different sets of emission factors during the assessment process has lead to some inconsistencies between results from neighbouring local authorities and also between different modelling exercises undertaken by the same local authorities. One purpose of this study has been to compare three different sets of emission factors, including the most recent set, and to some degree highlight the uncertainty associated with the use of factors, such as the shift of emphasis in terms of emissions from cars to heavy goods vehicles. The most recently released emission factors are the most comprehensive to date, and theoretically more accurate than previous sets due to the larger database of emission measurements that they have been based on. Therefore, the most recent set of emission factors have been additionally used in a validation exercise between modelled and monitored data. Comparison has been undertaken with monitoring data at a variety of urban background, urban centre and roadside sites. This work has shown some differences between the predicted trends in emission factors and measured trends in ambient air pollution levels, especially at roadside sites, indicating an under-prediction of the air pollution contribution from road traffic.