Urban emissions hotspots: Quantifying vehicle congestion and air pollution using mobile phone GPS data
C. K. Gately, L. R. Hutyra, S. Peterson, and I. Sue Wing
Environmental Pollution (October 2017)
DOI: 10.1016/j.envpol.2017.05.091
On-road emissions vary widely on time scales as short as minutes and length scales as short as tens of meters. Detailed data on emissions at these scales are a prerequisite to accurately quantifying ambient pollution concentrations and identifying hotspots of human exposure within urban areas. We construct a highly resolved inventory of hourly fluxes of CO, NO2, NOx, PM2.5 and CO2 from road vehicles on 280,000 road segments in eastern Massachusetts for the year 2012. Our inventory integrates a large database of hourly vehicle speeds derived from mobile phone and vehicle GPS data with multiple regional datasets of vehicle flows, fleet characteristics, and local meteorology. We quantify the 'excess' emissions from traffic congestion, finding modest congestion enhancement (3-6
keywords: Air quality; Emissions; GPS; Inventory; Mobile phone; Traffic congestion; Urban