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- Title
- CO Florida 2012, A MOVES-Based, Near-Road, Screening Model.
- Creator
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Ritner, Mark, Cooper, Charles, Radwan, Ahmed, Randall, Andrew, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
-
Citizens in the United States are fortunate to have an excellent system of roadways and the affluence with which to afford automobiles. The flexibility of travel on demand for most allows for a variety of lifestyles, assists with conducting business, and contributes to the feeling of freedom that most citizens enjoy. The current vehicle fleet, which is primarily powered by internal combustion engines burning fossil fuels, does however contribute to the deterioration of air quality. This...
Show moreCitizens in the United States are fortunate to have an excellent system of roadways and the affluence with which to afford automobiles. The flexibility of travel on demand for most allows for a variety of lifestyles, assists with conducting business, and contributes to the feeling of freedom that most citizens enjoy. The current vehicle fleet, which is primarily powered by internal combustion engines burning fossil fuels, does however contribute to the deterioration of air quality. This effect is particularly significant in metropolitan areas. Motor vehicle exhausts contain several combustion bi-products that pose harmful effects to the environment and human health, in particular. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) have selected carbon monoxide (CO) as the air pollutant on which it has based its guidelines for assessing potential air quality impacts from roadway construction (EPA 1992).The design of roadway networks must consider traffic flows, Level of Service (LOS), cost, and National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) requirements. In light of the environmental standards it is necessary to model to estimate potential future near-road concentrations of CO. This modeling has two aspects, first determining the rate of pollutant emissions, and second determining how those pollutants disperse near the road. Obtaining a precise, realistic estimate of the near-road CO concentrations under a wide variety of weather and traffic patterns is a potentially huge undertaking. With budgetary constraints in mind, the development of a screening model is appropriate. CO Florida 2012 (COFL2012) is such a model that uses conservative assumptions to predict worst-case, near-road CO concentration. Projects that pass a COFL2012 model run do not require additional air quality modeling. Projects that fail a COFL2012 model run, however, may still be viable, but will require additional, detailed modeling and possibly project modifications.COFL2012 uses tables of emission factors (EFs) that were derived from numerous runs of the EPA's MOtor Vehicle Emission Simulator (MOVES2010a), which is indicated as the preferred model for near-road modeling of CO.(EPA 2009) COFL2012 then inputs the EFs, along with assumed link configurations, geographical assumptions, and user-inputted traffic information into input files that are run through CAL3QHC Version 2.0 (CAL3QHC2), the EPA's approved near-road dispersion model (EPA 1995).COFL2012 is a brand new Florida CO screening model, written from scratch. This author has written the computer code for COFL2012 in Visual Basic, using Microsoft Visual Studios 2010. Visual Studios utilizes the .net Framework 4. COFL2012 is easy to learn, quick to operate, and has been written to allow for future updates simply and easily, whenever the EPA releases updates to the databases that feed MOVES2010a.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2012
- Identifier
- CFE0004233, ucf:49011
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004233
- Title
- DEVELOPMENT OF A GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE FOR CAL3QHC CALLED CALQCAD.
- Creator
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Gawalpanchi, Sheetal, Cooper, Charles, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
-
One of the major sources of air pollution in the United States metropolitan areas is due to automobiles. With the huge growth of motor vehicles and, greater dependence on them, air pollution problems have been aggravated. According to the EPA, nearly 95% of carbon monoxide (CO ) (EPA 1999) in urban areas comes from mobile sources, of which 51% is contributed by on road vehicles. It is well known fact that, carbon monoxide is one of the major mobile source pollutants and CO has detrimental...
Show moreOne of the major sources of air pollution in the United States metropolitan areas is due to automobiles. With the huge growth of motor vehicles and, greater dependence on them, air pollution problems have been aggravated. According to the EPA, nearly 95% of carbon monoxide (CO ) (EPA 1999) in urban areas comes from mobile sources, of which 51% is contributed by on road vehicles. It is well known fact that, carbon monoxide is one of the major mobile source pollutants and CO has detrimental effects on the human health. Carbon monoxide is the result of mainly incomplete combustion of gasoline in motor vehicles (FDOT 1996). The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) gives important considerations to the actions to be taken. Transportation conformity . The Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA, 1970) was an important step in meeting the National Ambient Air Quality Standards In order to evaluate the effects of CO and Particulate Matter (PM) impacts based on the criteria for NAAQS standards, it is necessary to conduct dispersion modeling of emissions for mobile source emissions. Design of transportation engineering systems (roadway design) should take care of both the flow of the traffic as well as the air pollution aspects involved. Roadway projects need to conform to the State Implementation Plan (SIP) and meet the NAAQS. EPA guidelines for air quality modeling on such roadway intersections recommend the use of CAL3QHC. The model has embedded in it CALINE 3.0 (Benson 1979) – a line source dispersion model based on the Gaussian equation. The model requires parameters with respect to the roadway geometry, fleet volume, averaging time, surface roughness, emission factors, etc. The CAL3QHC model is a DOS based model which requires the modeling parameters to be fed into an input file. The creation of input the file is a tedious job. Previous work at UCF, resulted in the development of CALQVIEW, which expedites this process of creating input files, but the task of extracting the coordinates still has to be done manually. The main aim of the thesis is to reduce the analysis time for modeling emissions from roadway intersections, by expediting the process of extracting the coordinates required for the CAL3QHC model. Normally, transportation engineers design and model intersections for the traffic flow utilizing tools such as AutoCAD, Microstation etc. This thesis was to develop advanced software allowing graphical editing and coordinates capturing from an AutoCAD file. This software was named as CALQCAD. This advanced version will enable the air quality analyst to capture the coordinates from an AutoCAD 2004 file. This should expedite the process of modeling intersections and decrease analyst time from a few days to few hours. The model helps to assure the air quality analyst to retain accuracy during the modeling process. The idea to create the standalone interface was to give the AutoCAD user full functionality of AutoCAD tools in case editing is required to the main drawing. It also provides the modeler with a separate graphical user interface (GUI).
Show less - Date Issued
- 2005
- Identifier
- CFE0000483, ucf:46364
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0000483
- Title
- Near-road Dispersion Modeling of Mobile Source Air Toxics (MSATs) in Florida.
- Creator
-
Westerlund, Kurt, Cooper, Charles, Radwan, Ahmed, Randall, Andrew, Hall, Steven, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
-
There is a growing public concern that emissions of mobile source air toxics (MSATs) from motor vehicles may pose a threat to human health. At present, no state or federal agencies require dispersion modeling of these compounds, but many agencies are concerned about potential future requirements. Current air pollution professionals are familiar with Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requirements for dispersion modeling to produce predicted...
Show moreThere is a growing public concern that emissions of mobile source air toxics (MSATs) from motor vehicles may pose a threat to human health. At present, no state or federal agencies require dispersion modeling of these compounds, but many agencies are concerned about potential future requirements. Current air pollution professionals are familiar with Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requirements for dispersion modeling to produce predicted concentrations for comparison with appropriate standards. This research examined a method in which the potential near-road concentrations of MSATs were calculated. It was believed that by assessing MSATs in much the same way that are used for other pollutants, the model and methods developed in this research could become a standard for those quantifying MSAT concentrations near-roadways.This dissertation reports on the results from short-term (1-hour) and long-term (annual average) MSATs dispersion modeling that has been conducted on seven intersections and seven freeway segments in the state of Florida. To accomplish the modeling, the CAL3QHC model was modified to handle individual MSAT emissions input data and to predict the concentrations of several MSATs around these roadway facilities. Additionally, since the CAL3MSAT model is DOS based and not user-friendly, time was invested to develop a Windows(&)#174; graphical user interface (GUI). Real-world data (traffic volumes and site geometry) were gathered, worst-case meteorology was selected, mobile source emission factors (EFs) were obtained from MOVES2010a, and worst-case modeling was conducted. Based on a literature search, maximum acceptable concentrations (MACs) were proposed for comparison with the modeled results, for both a short-term (1-hour) averaging time and a long-term (1-year) averaging time.Results from this CAL3MSAT modeling study indicate that for all of the intersections and freeway segments, the worst-case 1-hour modeled concentrations of the MSATs were several orders of magnitude below the proposed short-term MACs. The worst-case 1-year modeled concentrations were of the same order of magnitude as the proposed long-term MACs.The 1-year concentrations were first developed by applying a persistence factor to the worst-case 1-hour concentrations. In the interest of comparing the predicted concentrations from the CAL3MSAT persistence factor approach to other dispersion models, two EPA regulatory models (CAL3QHCR and AERMOD) with the ability to account for yearly meteorology, traffic, and signal timing were used. Both hourly and annual MSAT concentrations were predicted at one large urban intersection and compared for the three different dispersion models. The short-term 1-hour results from CAL3MSAT were higher than those predicted by the two other models due to the worst-case assumptions. Similarly, results indicate that the CAL3MSAT persistence factor approach predicted a worst-case annual average concentration on the same order of magnitude as the two other more refined models. This indicated that the CAL3MSAT model might be useful as a worst-case screening approach.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2013
- Identifier
- CFE0004772, ucf:49804
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004772
