A Highly Modular Systems Model For Integrated Assessment Of Aircraft Emissions

研究背景经济发展、全球联系日益紧密以及机票价格不断下降，使航空旅行成为所有运输方式中增长最快的部门。尽管平均而言，航空业在过去40年中的燃油效率显著提高，但旅行需求的强劲增长抵消了每100公里飞行燃油消耗的相关下降。因此，二氧化碳和其他温室气体及前体的排放量继续大幅增加。鉴于预计需求将进一步增长，提高燃料效率的主流技术潜力的下降将导致排放量进一步强劲增长。这些增长趋势需要认真分析，以确定各种政策工具（经济措施、飞机技术、空中交通业务）对环境和空中运输系统的潜在影响。为了应对这些趋势，在过去的几年里，美国和欧洲建立了几个重要的研究计划，旨在产生全球空中交通排放分布的今天和未来。与此同时，大气科学家的工作在很大程度上独立于旅行需求建模师和工程师。毫不奇怪，这些孤立的努力创造了一些困难时，进行综合评估飞机emissions.Aims和objectives-拟议的研究旨在超越这些孤立的努力，建立一套松散的连接模型，能够执行综合政策分析。高度模块化的系统将允许为其他研究小组、政府和行业轻松交换和测试不同的模型组件。拟议的模型系统的一些组件已经作为独立的飞机运动，当地的空气质量和全球大气模型，并需要进行修改，在整个模型系统的功能。其他模块需要重新开发。其中包括一个空运需求模块，用于模拟现有和预测未来的客运和货运量及其全球分布情况，以及一个机场活动模块，用于模拟起飞和降落的航班延误情况。飞机技术模块模拟了与预测运输需求相关的飞机燃料使用和排放。然后将估计的飞机排放物沿着各自的飞行轨迹输入当地空气污染和全球大气模型，以研究区域和全球环境影响。拟议的模型系统将在剑桥大学新成立的航空与环境研究所的综合评估工作中发挥核心作用。拟议的模型系统提供了广泛的综合政策分析，从经济措施（例如征收各种税收）到技术措施（例如氮氧化物排放量较低的新发动机），再到操作措施（例如改变飞行路线和巡航高度）及其对全球和当地大气的影响。与上述现有的孤立努力相比，综合评估所需的所有学科的内部能力具有多种优势。这些措施的范围从包括模型组件之间的反馈的可能性，以更好地理解权衡和制定最佳政策，增强建模组之间的信息流（与数据需求，质量和格式，研究方法等相关），对政府和行业的政策分析要求作出快速反应。

Context of researchEconomic development, increasing global linkages, and continuously declining airfares have made air travel the sector of fastest growth amongst all transportation modes. Although, on average, aviation has become significantly more fuel-efficient over the last 40 years, the associated decline in fuel use per passenger-kilometer flown has been more than offset by the strong growth in travel demand. As a result, emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases and precursors have continued to increase strongly. In light of the expected further growth in demand, the declining potential of mainstream technologies for increasing fuel efficiency will lead to a further strong growth in emissions. These growth trends require careful analysis to determine the potential implication of various policy tools (economic measures, aircraft technology, air traffic operation) on the environment and air transport system. In response to these trends, several important research programs, aiming at generating global air traffic emission distributions today and for the future were established during the past years both in the United States and Europe. At the same time, atmospheric scientists have been working largely independent from travel demand modelers and engineers. Not surprisingly, these isolated efforts create a number of difficulties when conducting integrated assessment of aircraft emissions.Aims and objectives The proposed research aims to go beyond these isolated efforts and build a set of loosely connected models, capable of performing integrated policy analysis. The highly modular system will allow to easily exchange and test different model components for other research groups, government, and industry. Some components of the proposed model system are already operational as independent aircraft movement, local air quality, and global atmospheric models and need to be modified to function within the overall model system. Other modules need to be newly developed. Among those are an Air Transport Demand Module, which simulates the existing and projects future levels of passenger and freight traffic and its global distribution, and an Airport Activity Module, which simulates flight delays for take-offs and landings. Aircraft fuel use and emissions associated with the predicted transport demand are simulated by an Aircraft Technology Module. The estimated aircraft emissions along the respective flight trajectories are then fed into local air pollution and global atmospheric models to study regional and global environmental impacts. The proposed model system would play a central role in the integrated assessment work of the newly founded Institute for Aviation and the Environment (IAE) at the University of Cambridge. Potential applications and benefitsThe proposed model system offers a wide range of integrated policy analyses, ranging from economic measures (e.g. the introduction of various types of taxes) over technology measures (e.g. new engines with lower nitrogen oxide emissions) to operational measures (e.g. change in flight routings and cruise altitude) and their global and local atmospheric impacts. Compared to the existing isolated efforts described above, the in-house capability of all disciplines required for integrated assessment offers multiple advantages. These range from the possibility of including feedbacks between the model components to better understand trade-offs and develop optimum policies, enhanced information flow between modeling groups (associated with data needs, quality, and formats, research methods, etc.), and quick response time for policy analysis requests from government and industry.