Emissions in India – Road Transport


Gridded Road Transport EmissionsThe road transport emissions vary both in space and time. The modeling domain considered for this exercise is very diverse (covering 640 districts, 36 states, and 22 cities (as subsets to some of the states)), with a combination of residential, industrial, commercial, agricultural, barn lands, and water bodies. Each of the vehicle modes (2Ws, 3Ws, 4Ws, buses, and trucks) also behave differently, which makes the spatial disaggregation of the estimated total emissions a challenging task (maps for 2012 and projected 2030 are presented below). Results from this road transport emissions study were published as a journal article in Energy Policy, looking at the anticipated growth rate in the vehicle sales, what that means to the urban air quality, and a road map for what is needed in the urban transport sector for better air quality. The findings are also part of the Planning Commission’s National Transport Development Policy Committee (NTDPC) report.

Gridded Road Transport Emissions
An animation of the gridded PM2.5 emissions for year 2015, is based on physical surveys (conducted with support and help from IIT-Delhi) and online data surveillance for multiple cities. We assume that this diurnal cycle is prevalent throughout the year, unless special events are in effect, which will be adjusted for manually.

Gridded Road Transport Emissions


For the road transport, multiple sources of information was utilized in building this spatially and temporally varying emissions inventory – GIS databases of the highways, main road, arterial roads, smaller roads, commercial and residential activities, industrial estates (including brick kilns and power plants), and online surveillance data (like below). A useful database is the information on road congestion, available from the google maps (shown below is the real time congestion map). While it is difficult to tell which vehicle is in the red zone, this is extremely useful in understanding the vehicle flow in the urban areas. A series of GPS unit were also utilized, traveling in 4Ws, 3Ws, 2Ws, and Buses, to understand how often each of the modes are idling (traveling under 4 kmph). Details of this survey are presented in a journal article.

 

The road transport emissions are also available as summary sheets for each state and the subset cities (below).

Road Transport Emissions Road Transport Emissions Road Transport Emissions Road Transport Emissions

Additional resource material


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