Review of Road Dust Resuspension Modelling Approaches and Comparisons Analysis for a UK Case Study

Abstract

This report provides a review of several measurement studies and campaigns focusing on road dust resuspension (RDS), which is becoming an important source of ambient particulate matter (PM) concentrations. There is a growing requirement from stakeholders, policy makers and scientists for gathering additional data around RDS, since there is a lack of well-established methodologies or those developed for measuring or modelling this source of emissions are not very recent. Moreover, conventional inventory methodologies are not available for this source of emissions, and it is not yet covered in the UK’s National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory (NAEI) neither in the inventory guidebooks at European level. Based on the available literature and models, this paper also seeks to provide some preliminary considerations whether an approach can be tailored for application in air quality models used for modelling ambient PM concentrations in the UK in a consistent manner and demonstrated using a state-of-art air quality modelling tool, namely RapidAir®. The impact of including resuspension emissions on roadside concentrations was modelled in a UK case study with the greatest increases in modelled road PM10 concentrations observed on or near the road surface. The paper concludes with recommendations for longer-term implementation of the proposed improvements such as investigation of the temporal effects of RDS on PM levels; of the influence of different type of tyre materials and mixture (e.g., composition) and designs (e.g., shape, dimensions and tread); and influence of different existing pavements or of new road surface types.