Journal Article

InMAP: A model for air pollution interventions

Hill, Jason D, Marshall, Julian D, Tessum, Christopher W

2017

Overview

Mechanistic air pollution modeling is essential in air quality management, yet the extensive expertise and computational resources required to run most models prevent their use in many situations where their results would be useful. Here, we present InMAP (Intervention Model for Air Pollution), which offers an alternative to comprehensive air quality models for estimating the air pollution health impacts of emission reductions and other potential interventions. InMAP estimates annual-average changes in primary and secondary fine particle (PM2.5) concentrations-the air pollution outcome generally causing the largest monetized health damages-attributable to annual changes in precursor emissions. InMAP leverages pre-processed physical and chemical information from the output of a state-of-the-science chemical transport model and a variable spatial resolution computational grid to perform simulations that are several orders of magnitude less computationally intensive than comprehensive model simulations. In comparisons run here, InMAP recreates comprehensive model predictions of changes in total PM2.5 concentrations with population-weighted mean fractional bias (MFB) of -17% and population-weighted R2 = 0.90. Although InMAP is not specifically designed to reproduce total observed concentrations, it is able to do so within published air quality model performance criteria for total PM2.5. Potential uses of InMAP include studying exposure, health, and environmental justice impacts of potential shifts in emissions for annual-average PM2.5. InMAP can be trained to run for any spatial and temporal domain given the availability of appropriate simulation output from a comprehensive model. The InMAP model source code and input data are freely available online under an open-source license.

• Publisher: Public Library of Science,Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subject: Air Pollutants - analysis / Air pollution / Air Pollution - analysis / Air Pollution - prevention & control / Air quality / Air quality management / Air quality models / Airborne particulates / Atmosphere / Atmospheric boundary layer / Atmospheric pollution / Atmospheric pollution emission reduction / Availability / Chemical transport / Computation / Computational grids / Computer applications / Computer Simulation / Damage / Earth Sciences / Ecology and Environmental Sciences / Emission standards / Emissions / Emissions control / Engineering and Technology / Environmental engineering / Environmental impact / Environmental justice / Environmental Monitoring - statistics & numerical data / Health / Humans / Internet / Models, Statistical / Outdoor air quality / Particulate matter / Particulate Matter - analysis / Particulate matter emissions / Physical Sciences / Pollution / Pollution abatement / Quality management / Research and Analysis Methods / Resource management / Software / Source code / Spatial resolution / Time Factors / Vehicle Emissions - analysis / Vehicle Emissions - prevention & control