Estimating urban roadside emissions with an atmospheric dispersion model based on in-field measurements

•Proposing an approach to estimate urban roadside emissions in Shanghai, China.•Localizing the U.S. vehicle emission model to China's vehicle emissions.•Expanding the application of Europe street atmospheric dispersion model in China.•Calibrating localized vehicle emission rates based on in-field measurement data.

Urban vehicle emission models have been utilized to calculate pollutant concentrations at both microscopic and macroscopic levels based on vehicle emission rates which few researches have been able to validate. The objective of our research is to estimate urban roadside emissions and calibrate it with in-field measurement data. We calculated the vehicle emissions based on localized emission rates, and used an atmospheric dispersion model to estimate roadside emissions. A non-linear regression model was applied to calibrate the localized emission rates using in-field measurement data. With the calibrated emission rates, emissions on urban roadside can be estimated with a high accuracy.