Modelling Rush Hour Emissions for Ottawa’s Major Roadways

Development of a Methodology for Estimating Vehicle Emissions (416 page pdf thesis, Jennifer Armstrong, Carleton University, AMICUS service of Library and Archives Canada, Aug. 2000)

Also discussed here: Development of a Methodology for Estimating Vehicle Emissions (41 PowerPoint slideshow, Jennifer Armstrong, Aug. 2000)

And here: Modelling urban transportation emissions: role of GIS (Jennifer M. Armstrong and Ata M. Khan, Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, Volume 28, Issue 4, July 2004)

And here: EMME/2 Helps Transportation Planners:ArcInfo-Based Highway Project Modeling (GIS Tools, ArcNews, Vol. 17, No. 4, Winter 1995)

The report reviewed today is a ground-breaking thesis by a graduate student at Carleton University’s engineering school which won awards from the Ontario Ministry of Environment and the Professional Engineers of Ontario in 2001. The research brought together the vehicle emission data for the national capital area which included Origin-Destination municipal survey data, travel demand modelling, emission modelling and GIS mapping to produce maps of pollutants at peak travel times across the cities of Ottawa and Hull (now Gatineau). It shows quantitatively the importance of vehicle emissions particularly in the congested downtown and near the 6 –8 lane Queensway that bisects the city of Ottawa.



Key Quotes:

“Regional EMME/2 [travel demand] model can predict: number of vehicles per road segment, average operating speed, trip length distribution”

“The EMME/2 Emission Calculator:

• Computes CO, NOX, and HC emissions using MOBILE5 [emission model]- Input vehicle mix data, trip length distribution,temperature data, operating mode fractions
• Computes greenhouse gas emissions using fuel consumption equations specified by the user - Input vehicle mix data, fuel consumptionrelationships, and GHG factors; For each vehicle class, compute fuel consumption and GHG emissions

“Benefits of research:

• Development of tools to compute vehicle emissions
• Estimation of vehicle emissions in NCR
• Sensitivity analysis of input parameters
• Illustration of a potential application of GIS in transportation planning
• Analysis of intra-zonal trips, commercial vehicle traffic, operating mode fractions”

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