Functional relationships between emission by cars and urban pollutant concentrations: a simplified phenomenological approach

Abstract

This work is aimed at providing a contribution toward the singling out of a functional relationship between the traffic flow in urban contexts and the physical dynamic of the pollutant diffusion. The values of CO concentrations in selected sites of the urban layout are obtained by utilizing as input the number of vehicles predicted by the phenomenological model here introduced. This represents a quite different approach in the simulation of the pollutant dynamics in urban contexts. One of the main features of the proposed traffic model, is the capability of realistically reproducing the characteristic of the traffic flows. The feasibility of the model to be applied in other urban situations is discussed in the paper along with the possible ways of validating it.