Articles | Volume 11, issue 6
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-11-2209-2018
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-11-2209-2018
Model description paper
 | 
14 Jun 2018
Model description paper |  | 14 Jun 2018

VEIN v0.2.2: an R package for bottom–up vehicular emissions inventories

Sergio Ibarra-Espinosa, Rita Ynoue, Shane O'Sullivan, Edzer Pebesma, María de Fátima Andrade, and Mauricio Osses

Abstract. Emission inventories are the quantification of pollutants from different sources. They provide important information not only for climate and weather studies but also for urban planning and environmental health protection. We developed an open-source model (called Vehicular Emissions Inventory – VEIN v0.2.2) that provides high-resolution vehicular emissions inventories for different fields of studies. We focused on vehicular sources at street and hourly levels due to the current lack of information about these sources, mainly in developing countries.

The type of emissions covered by VEIN are exhaust (hot and cold) and evaporative considering the deterioration of the factors. VEIN also performs speciation and incorporates functions to generate and spatially allocate emissions databases. It allows users to load their own emission factors, but it also provides emission factors from the road transport model (Copert), the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Brazilian databases. The VEIN model reads, distributes by age of use and extrapolates hourly traffic data, and it estimates emissions hourly and spatially. Based on our knowledge, VEIN is the first bottom–up vehicle emissions software that allows input to the WRF-Chem model. Therefore, the VEIN model provides an important, easy and fast way of elaborating or analyzing vehicular emissions inventories under different scenarios. The VEIN results can be used as an input for atmospheric models, health studies, air quality standardizations and decision making.

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Short summary
An emissions inventory is a compilation of the mass of pollutants released by different sources. The quantification of vehicular emissions is difficult because these sources are in movement across streets. Also, emissions processes are multiple and complex. In this paper, we present an open-source software for calculating spatial vehicular emissions, including exhaust, evaporation and wear, named VEIN. The software is an R package available at https://github.com/atmoschem/vein.