Localization and Evaluation of Motor Vehicle Emission Simulator (MOVES) Model for Predicting the Emissions of Private Cars: a Case Study of Shenzhen City, China

Motor Vehicle emission simulator(MOVES) model was localized by changing the base emission rates in MySQL database of the model, and using the actual measured data for private cars in Shenzhen City, China. The performances of localized MOVES model and non-localized MOVES model were evaluated by comparing the predicted emission factors to the measured ones. The results showed that by localization of the base emission rates, the prediction accuracy of the localized MOVES model for hydrocarbon (HC) and nitrogen oxides (NO_x) was significantly improved. The accuracy of the localized MOVES model simulations in the Opmode increased by 86%, 88% and 71% for HC, 76%, 42% and 72% for NO_x on arterial roads, expressways and highways. For carbon monoxide (CO), however, the simulation performance based on the average velocity mode on expressways and highways became poor after localization, with the decrease of 28% and 8% respectively. Overall, by the localization of the base emission rates, the relative errors of the simulated emission factors of HC, CO and NO_x of private cars were less than 37%.