Simplified models for integrated air quality management in urban areas

The Norwegian Institute for Air Research, NILU has been requested by the World Bank to support the Hanoi Urban Transport and Development Project (HUTDP) with the Urban Air Quality Management Subcomponent primarily executed by Hanoi's Department of Natural Resources, Environment and Housing (DONREH). As part of the evaluation NILU has performed air quality modeling in order to assess the importance of air pollution from mobile sources in Hanoi. For this purpose, NILU has combined two models; the NILU developed air quality modelling planning system AirQUIS and the Simple Interactive Model for Better Air Quality (SIM-Air) developed by the World Bank. AirQUIS was used to simulate the computation of an emission inventory for key pollutant and estimate the impact of the sources on air quality. SIM-Air will be used to assess and evaluate health effect impact, and allowed for various policies measures, economic and technical options to be evaluated for their environmental and health impacts and cost effectiveness. This model uses simple mathematical and financial tools to evaluate different air quality management options. All the management options are linked to cost and health impacts based on percentage change in the considered option.