A Modeling Framework for Near-Road Population Exposure to Traffic-Related PM2.5 and Environmental Equity Analysis: A Case Study in Atlanta, Georgia

In this study, a modeling framework for population exposure to traffic-related PM2.5 with high spatiotemporal resolution is proposed and applied to the I-575/I-75 Northwest Corridor (NWC) in Atlanta, GA, for environmental equity analysis. The analyses retrieved trip data from the Atlanta Regional Commission’s (ARC) Activity-Based Model 2020 (ABM2020), after implementing path retention algorithms (Zhao, et al., 2019) to generate individual travel paths for more than 20 million predicted vehicle trips. Emission rates for each link were retrieved from MOVES-Matrix given the ABM link speed and facility type, the ARC’s county-level fleet composition data, and regional fuel properties and I&M program parameters. High-resolution downwind concentration profiles were predicted using EPA’s AERMOD microscale dispersion model with AERMET meteorology profiles for a huge array of receptors. Trip-end locations were derived from the ABM trip data, and the on-road trajectories for each person-trip (vehicle trace data) were derived from the travel paths through network. ABM synthetic household and person data were used in demographic assessment, and linked to representative household latitude and longitude locations in the Epsilon 2019 household demographic dataset. Individual exposure to traffic-related PM2.5 in time and space (average hourly concentration) was assessed by overlaying the second-by-second person location profiles (for 24 hours) against the hourly predicted PM2.5 concentration profiles. The analyses summarize the results across 16 demographic groups and the aggregate population exposure are compared to assess potential impact differences across demographics. High-income households in the corridor were exposed to less traffic-related air pollution as they tended to live further from the freeways. The analyses did not reveal large disproportionate negative impacts on low income groups along this specific corridor, but lager disproportionate negative impacts are expected elsewhere in the metro area due to the spatial clustering of income groups along other corridors. Overall, the research demonstrates the applicability of the modeling framework and describes how the various elements (e.g., link screening, dispersion modeling, path tracing, etc.) are optimized on the supercomputing cluster. View the NCST Project Webpage