Novel high-resolution spatial mapping of health and climate emissions from urban transport in Sao Paulo megacity (NOTS)

Traffic-related atmospheric emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and atmospheric toxic pollutants (APs) are a serious environmental problem that affects climate change and air quality in megacities. Nowadays, 80% of air pollution in São Paulo comes from vehicles. The manuscript deals with the development of the inventories of vehicular emissions within the megacity based and the development of a tri-dimensional model of Regional Air Quality and Climate Changes (RAQCM) to simulate GHGs and concentrations of APs based on the inventories of emissions of high resolution created in the preceeding phase in order to identify hot spots of air pollution and poor air quality. Emission data of the vehicles in the zones studied, with spatial resolutions of 0.5 km and temporal resolution of 1h, will be developed using transport model TransCAD. The mobile sources of urban vehicles will be distributed and the kilometers traveled by the vehicles per hour will be available for each zone of the megacity and for each type of road and emissions. For each road and vehicle types, the GHG and AP emissions will be proportional to the VKT and to the emission factors (EFs). The GHG emissions and those of the APs will later be distributed among the types of vehicle in accordance with the distribution of the traffic. Monitors will be placed through the MRSP close to identified critical points and vehicle emission hot spots to register measurements continuously. Therefore, the research integrates two approaches: the vehicle emission and air quality modeling and the use of monitors to utilize them for model validation and develop novel approaches for high-resolution spatial mapping. In addition to transportation, the study could provide a basis for establishing sound climate change policies in other areas such as public health and urban planning.