Air Pollution mAnagement and interVentIon Tool foR IndiA (PAVITRA): Making a Case for Multi-Scale Multi-Sector Air Quality Management
LUCAS ROJAS MENDOZA, Srinidhi Balasubramanian, Neeldip Barman, Yuzhou Wang, Julian Marshall, Chandra Venkataraman, Joshua S. Apte, University of California Berkeley
Abstract Number: 503
Working Group: Aerosol Exposure
Abstract
India has one of the highest population-weighted mean (PWM) exposures to ambient PM2.5 in the world. Comprehensive studies on the impact of transported PM2.5 across multiple scales (e.g., regions, states, and cities) and sectors are limited. Despite evidence of long-range transport, India's National Clean Air Program (NCAP) remains largely city-centric, focusing on 131 non-attainment cities separately. The current framework stands in direct contrast to calls for a shift towards multi-scale, multi-sector air quality management.
While conventional chemical transport models have traditionally been used to map emissions to spatial-temporal predictions of air pollutants, they are computationally and time expensive. Here, we develop the PAVITRA (air Pollution mAnagement and interVentIon Tool foR IndiA) tool, which includes the SMoG-PAVITRA 5km-gridded emissions inventory across 19 economic sectors and InMAP-PAVITRA for South Asia, a reduced complexity model created from an optimized WRF-Chem simulation. The PAVITRA combination of models and emission inventory datasets lowers technical barriers and streamlines predictions of PM2.5 concentrations at high spatial resolutions, enabling comprehensive evaluation of potential emissions scenarios.
We employ PAVITRA using a variable-sized grid (1 km to 60 km, based on population density), decomposing emissions by sector and across 6 regions, to calculate PWM PM2.5 concentrations for primary PM2.5 and four precursor species (NH3, NOx, SOx, VOC). Results capture the spatial heterogeneity in PWM PM2.5 exposures because of emissions profiles and sectoral contributions. We find that domestic, agriculture, energy, industry, and transportation sectors are major contributors to air pollution for all regions. Across regions, 60-80% of exposure is from within-region emissions; the rest (20-40%) comes from upwind emissions. For the city of Delhi, a key target of the NCAP’s city-centered approach, within-city emissions account for less than 50% of exposure; this highlights the inadequacy of solely city-centered approaches in addressing PM2.5 exposure, and the need for a multi-scale multi-sector approach.