Modeling Road Construction Air Quality Impacts

Details

• Creators:
  Walker, Curtis ; Juliana, Timothy ; Lacey, Forrest ; Kumar, Rajesh
• Corporate Creators:
  University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). Research Applications Laboratory (RAL)
• Corporate Contributors:
  Colorado. Department of Transportation. Applied Research & Innovations Branch ; United States. Department of Transportation. Federal Highway Administration
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  Air Quality Construction Construction Emissions Data Analysis Environmental Impacts Feasibility Analysis Pollutants Road Construction Sensors
• Publication/ Report Number:
  CDOT-2024-10
• Resource Type:
  Tech Report
• Geographical Coverage:
  United States ; Denver (Colorado)
• Edition:
  Final Report
• Corporate Publisher:
  Colorado. Dept. of Transportation. Applied Research and Innovation Branch
• Abstract:
  Understanding construction emissions and their impacts to air quality is a shared responsibility. The Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) have pooled resources to better quantify and understand the influence of construction activities on air quality. The objective of this pilot study is to explore the feasibility of modeling the impact of construction activities along the Interstate-270 corridor on air quality in the Denver metro area. Given the small scales (a few meters) necessary for this study, the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with Chemistry in the Large-Eddy Simulation (WRF-Chem-LES) mode, which can resolve atmospheric turbulence down to 10 m, is used. WRF-Chem-LES is implemented in a quasi-idealized configuration representative of synoptically quiescent summertime meteorological conditions in the Denver metro area. Emissions (e.g., VOCs, PM2.5) related to construction activities are defined in consultation with CDOT and CDPHE. Additionally, low-cost air quality sensors are leveraged along/near the corridor to consider potential opportunities to implement model bias correction. The primary focus of the analysis was PM2.5 construction emissions. Overall, it was found that the model was capable of simulating construction emissions; however, there was a noteworthy low bias relative to observed PM2.5 emissions. This is likely a result of the thickness of the model lowest level relative to the sensor measurement height. An assessment of CDOT/CDPHE deployed low-cost sensors relative to other data available along/near the Interstate-270 corridor demonstrated reasonable consistency in the overall trend of the data, albeit noteworthy differences were attributable to different temporal resolutions and sensor placement. Future work can build upon and further refine this modeling framework as well as identify opportunities to prioritize sensor placement and future modeling studies.
• Format:
  PDF
• Funding:
  CDPHE 2023-0920
• Collection(s):
  US Transportation Collection
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:3816f99bec8b0ea1851a9980b0b4fcdcf47c4041d592eb12da9549185dc9663172e2bb696400fc04f368f1b744acce7db16264032e7abb81b6de4aa849903a84
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/89053/dot_89053_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 2.49 MB ]