Methodology choice could affect air quality interpretation? A case study for an international airport, Marco Polo, Venice
Introduction
The evaluation of emission factors and inventories has been for a long time a fundamental tools for air quality assessment and management. Air Quality emission estimates are important for developing emission control strategies, ascertaining sources, effects and appropriate mitigation strategies. The estimate of the emissions produced by the main pollutants sources represents also a key element in the chain of the modeling system.
Detailed information are required to create a realistic inventory or an adequate emission input and different methodologies have been studied, created and approved by scientific or government agencies in relation to the type of sources considered and aims of the study or environmental impact assessment requirement.
Despite this and the huge development in recent years, there are still elements that are not completely considered, that can lead to strong difference in emission estimates in relation to the choice made by the user.
These aspects are becoming more and more important for specific sources like airports. In fact, aircraft engine emissions are an important anthropogenic source of soot particles in the upper troposphere and in the vicinity of the airports. They influence climate and contribute to global warming. (IPCC, 1999, IPCC, 2007, Lee et al., 2009, Abegglen et al., 2016). In addition, their impact on air quality and on human health and the environment has been confirmed (Ratliff et al., 2009, Barrett et al., 2010, Barrett et al., 2012, Levy et al., 2012, Schlenker and Walker, 2012, Ashok et al., 2013, Yim et al., 2013, Pecorari et al., 2016, Abegglen et al., 2016). Recent growth of flight request has led to the continuous increase of commercial air traffic. The annual future growth rate is estimated to be 3.4 – 6.1% (Eurocontrol, 2008). As a consequence, this has led to rising public awareness and concerns about the aircrafts emissions and their impact on people health.
On the other hand there are no guidelines or no legal references in national or international law yet that can ensure a standard for an environmental assessment and sustainable development of an airport. This lack in legislation do not allow an exhaustive evaluation of atmospheric pollutant emission impact of an airport, and without a standard airports and aircraft producers do not implement policies that can lead to technical improvement and best practices that can reduce emission. On the other hand a legal reference could help an airport to have a transparent behavior towards stakeholders.
Recent collaboration between the Marco Polo Airport and Ca’ Foscari has given the possibilities of testing two methodologies to estimate aircraft emission. The first estimate was based on the more detailed EMEP/CORINAIR methodology while the second one was made with the dedicated software EDMS 5.1.4.1 (Emissions and Dispersion Modeling System), developed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in cooperation with the United States Air Force (USAF) (FAA, 2013). Both are based on the ICAO emission factors, but the second one permit a better representation of aircraft emissions in relation to the engine choice and to the realistic taxi times. Despite this software, which is created for airport emission for airport specific emission evaluation, it is not commonly used by stakeholders involved in the implementation of an emission inventory.
This paper aimed to answer important questions related to air quality management: i) different choices in the emission estimate methodologies can affect the quantification of an airport emission inventory? ii) Does this difference affect the concentrations estimations and consequently the evaluation of the real airport impact in the surroundings, especially for airports in urban areas? iii) is it possible to define a range of realistic values that can be used as a reference for eventual future legislation? iv) is there a feasible method that could be settled as more realistic or a better interpretation of emissions?
Section snippets
Methodology
In the following sections work methodologies will be presented. The first paragraph (2.1) is dedicated to the characterization of the study area. Description of the data used and the methodology of building emission inventory is reported in section 2.2 – 2.3.
Marco polo fleet and air traffic trends.
As stated above Marco Polo airport in Venice is one of the most important Italian airports for both domestic and international flights. As reported in Fig. 1 the number of flights increased strongly from 2009 to 2011 and then it decreased till 2014. Subsequently the number of movements strongly increased, exceeding the amount of 2014.
It must to be observed (Fig. 2) that the fleet composition vary over years, aircraft, like MD82 that was present with a considerable percentage, disappear by the
Conclusions
This study present a comparison of two formal methods for emission estimation, in order to find a “standard” in method.
The main findings of this works are summarized as follow:
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The number of flights at Marco Polo Airport increases during all the evaluated period (2009–2017), despite of 2011–2014 years that present a decline in number of landing and take off. This trend could be attributable to the economical crisis that was present in Europe during those years.
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EDMS estimation shows significantly
Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful to SAVE S.p.A. for funding the project.
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