EDB provides functionality for:
- Advanced emission modeling
- Presentation
- Report generation
- Version control
- Quality control
- Trend analysis and comparison between different inventories
- Export to various formats
- Publication of emission data on the web
Integration with dispersion models and real time data
Within the Airviro environment, the dynamic EDB is directly linked to the dispersion models, allowing you to combine the different emission scenarios with various dispersion scenarios. Given the weather and the calendar date/hour, relevant emissions will be used as input data to the dispersion calculation. Your final simulation result will thus rely on realistic descriptions of both emissions and weather conditions.
Being fully integrated with the Indico module for time-series data, EDB can make use of real time data. This keeps the emission database ready for use with the latest available and most accurate information. Typical usage of real-time data in Airviro EDB is:
- Industrial installations using stack measurements
- City systems using traffic flow measurements (SCOOT)
- GPS-coordinates of mobile sources such as ships
Scenario studies
Airviro EDB can be used to simulate emission scenarios for new infrastructure projects and to estimate effect of measures to reduce emissions. For example; what will happen if heavy vehicles are removed from the city center? The emission scenarios can be used with a dispersion model to calculate the dispersion of contaminants and the connected population exposure. Airviro EDB contains tools to make use of highly detailed information on emissions, in order to get a trustworthy, objective basis for decisions.
Road emissions
Airviro supports the state-of-the-art ARTEMIS road model, using specific emission factors for different traffic situations. It also supports road models based on average trip speed, such as COPERT. Airviro is typically used to model road emissions for the entire road network of a country or a region. Using traffic flows provided by traffic models, scenario calculations can be made to provide a basis for decisions regarding infrastructure projects and traffic control.
Top-down emission inventories
Airviro EDB contains a very versatile format for gridded emissions, making it ideal for handling top-down inventories. Each emission grid can contain various layers and each grid cell contains activity or emission as well as any relevant meta-data.
Top-down emission inventories are typically created using Airviro together with standard GIS software. While GIS provides tools for managing a diversity of different data formats and combining the information into standardized rasters, Airviro EDB provides functionality to make efficient and automated use of the data.
Source categories can be specified using several separate code-systems, making it possible to follow standards of IPCC, CLRTAP at the same time as using categories defined for dispersion modeling.
By combining gridded emissions and individual sources, the user can make use of the most detailed information available.
The user interface
The power of the user interface is not only due to the easy to use menus in the webbrowser window environment, or the graphical input/output facilities. The database includes structures designed to maximize the easy with which you knowledge of emission sources can be included in the system. The tables provided enable you to describe mission factors, time variation, weather impact on emission as well as other features that help you to convert obtainable information to emissions.
Interface to other systems/computers
Airviro EDB has a Excel interface, Wedbed, that enables import and export of a whole emission database to/from Airviro. Using the report generator, you can write your output in different formats that directly can be used for presentation in third-party software such as ESRI ArcGIS. Furthermore, you can export the output to any computer system and software by utilizing the output ASCII format. It is also possible to import data through the ASCII interface, for example traffic information from a traffic simulation system.