Air pollution is a growing problem for most cities in the world and this is more serious for cities in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. In response to the deteriorating urban health and growing civic demand, scientists and policy makers have recognized the need for an integrated air quality management, for better urban planning and clean air.

A majority of the existing tools for integrated assessment are complex and data-intensive. There is a need to develop an organized knowledge base to feed into a robust decision support tool that takes into account the various institutional and technical challenges in developing countries.

The SIM-air family of tools are developed with one objective - make use of the best available information with the academic, government, and non-governmental bodies, in order to support integrated air quality management, whose schematics are presented to the right. The tools are designed to collate the necessary information, to estimate key parameters (e.g. emissions from various sources) and to simulate the interactions between emissions, pollution dispersion, impacts, and management options in an environmental and economic context. 

This model was applied for air quality management studies and planning in cities across the world. Applications of SIM-air across cities in Asia, Africa, and Latin America

In 2011-12, SIM-air program was applied to develop an emissions inventory, conduct dispersion modeling of particulate pollution, and evaluated the health impacts of current and projected 2020 scenarios in a co-benefits framework for six cities - Pune, Chennai, Indore, Ahmedabad, Surat, and Rajkot. The emissions inventory was developed for all the criteria pollutants including PM10, PM2.5, NOx, SO2, CO, VOCs and CO2. The sectors included in the analysis are – vehicle exhaust, road dust, domestic solid fuel combustion (in the low income and high income groups), food kiosks, generator usage in multiple venues (such as hospitals, hotels, markets, and apartment complexes), industrial emissions including those from brick kilns and rock quarries, construction activities in the city, and waste burning along the roadside and at the landfills. More on the study.

SIM-air Model and Manual - Downloads

All the tools under the SIM-air program are free to download and use. They are designed in an open-source platform and in a plug & play mode. The modular nature of the tools allows the user to evaluate emissions and pollution control options by sector. Browse the available tools VAPIS, Smart-CART, AQI calculator, and HIC-UP, under the "SIM-air" tab above.

Each of the components in integrated air quality management, involve a thesis of work, require a lot of information and proficiency, but it is not an impossible task, if efforts are put in place to do at least the minimum - to start the work. To support this initiative, along with the model and manual downloads, as part of the SIM-comic book series, a booklet was published in 2008, to explain air quality management components in a graphic form. Download an easy to read "primer on air quality management".

Version 1.3 (2009) -

This is a demo version of SIM-air which allows for 1-year snapshot analysis for a city or region divided into 25 (five by five) grid cells. The tool is updated to calculate the emissions for five sectors - transport, industry, residential, fugitive dust, and garbage burning, along with concentration maps of primary and secondary particulate matter. The summary sheets in the tool allows for visualizing the health impacts of the modeled emissions and concentrations, and optimization of select options (using the Solver function of the MS Excel). The tool is customized for city level applications and the domains can be expanded from (five by five) used in the demo version, to as much as 80 x 80, which we applied for case studies of Delhi (India) and Dhaka (Bangladesh). [Download SIM-air V1.3] [Manual]

Version 1.2 (2004) -

This is the first version of the model, released at the Better Air Quality conference in Agra (India). This version is also operational for quick assessment. However, the domain calculations are restricted to (three by three) grids and the module calculations are older, which tend to take longer simulation times. [Download SIM-air V1.2]

Version 2.0 (2009) -

This version of the SIM-air model allows for two baseline (current and future) and one control scenario calculations simultaneously. [Download]

SIM-air Working Paper Series

One of the impediments to good policy making is the lack of available data and analysis. The case studies developed using the SIM‐air family of tools, data, and analysis results are distributed through the SIM‐air Working Paper Series. Latest in the series include

• SIM‐39‐2012 ‐‐ Urban air pollution and co-benefits analysis for Indian cities
• SIM‐38‐2012 ‐‐ A Multi‐pollutant emissions inventory for National Capital Region of Delhi, India
• SIM‐37‐2012 ‐‐ An Analysis of health & carbon co‐benefits for Pune, India
• SIM‐36‐2011 ‐‐ Air Quality Forecasting System for Cities: Modeling Architecture for Delhi, India
• SIM‐35‐2010 ‐‐ AQI for Delhi, India: Trend Analysis & Implications to 2010 CW Games
• SIM‐34‐2010 ‐‐ Air Quality Index (AQI): Methodology & applications for public awareness in Cities
  

If you have questions on the tools, please send an email to CLOAKING