Modelling future impacts of air pollution using the multi-scale UK Integrated Assessment Model (UKIAM)

Abstract

Integrated assessment modelling has evolved to support policy development in relation to air pollutants and greenhouse gases by providing integrated simulation tools able to produce quick and realistic representations of emission scenarios and their environmental impacts without the need to re-run complex atmospheric dispersion models. The UK Integrated Assessment Model (UKIAM) has been developed to investigate strategies for reducing UK emissions by bringing together information on projected UK emissions of SO2, NOx, NH3, PM10 and PM2.5, atmospheric dispersion, criteria for protection of ecosystems, urban air quality and human health, and data on potential abatement measures to reduce emissions, which may subsequently be linked to associated analyses of costs and benefits. We describe the multi-scale model structure ranging from continental to roadside, UK emission sources, atmospheric dispersion of emissions, implementation of abatement measures, integration with European-scale modelling, and environmental impacts. The model generates outputs from a national perspective which are used to evaluate alternative strategies in relation to emissions, deposition patterns, air quality metrics and ecosystem critical load exceedance. We present a selection of scenarios in relation to the 2020 Business-As-Usual projections and identify potential further reductions beyond those currently being planned.

Modelling PM2.5 impact indicators in Europe: Health effects and legal compliance

“…Several research groups have established integrated assessment modelling tools that have been used to quantify the effects of different policy options on anthropogenic emissions and their impacts on environmental parameters, on a national (Oxley and ApSimon, 2007;Oxley et al, 2013), regional (Amann et al, 2011) or global scale (Van Dingenen et al, 2014). The GAINS integrated assessment model (Amann et al, 2011) provides for the whole of Europe a consistent framework that combines bottom-up emission calculations from projections of anthropogenic activity in all economic sectors and data on control technologies and their emission factors for various pollutants with an impact calculation scheme, providing as output variables (among others) projections on premature mortality from exposure to ambient air pollution, as well as projections of ambient PM 2.5 concentrations at 1875 air quality monitoring stations reporting to the AirBase European Air Quality Database.…”

Metrics in Urban Health: Current Developments and Future Prospects

“…In particular, measures of the concentration of particulate matter (PM) of different sizes such as PM 2.5 and PM 10 (particles with diameters less than or equal to 2.5 µm and 10 µm) were most commonly used to determine health effects (7,8,18,44,53,75,92,113). Other common pollutants include nitric oxides and sulfur dioxide (89,90).…”

An integrated assessment of two decades of air pollution policy making in Spain: Impacts, costs and improvements

“…The ul timate goal is to quantify the global improvement on the air quality question in Spain in order to provide enough guidance on the effective ness of the measures that were undertaken and those that are still to be enforced towards the 2020 target year. This analysis will be conducted following an integrated assessment (IA) approach, due to the fact that it focuses on holistic modelling per spectives that are able to generate relevant information for environ mental planning without the need to configure complex atmospheric dispersion models under long run times (Moussiopoulos et al, 2009;Oxley et al, 2013). Relying in IA allows quantifying the most relevant ef fects that air quality has on human and environmental health for both past and future scenarios.…”