Implication of activity-based vessel emission to improve regional air inventory in a port area

This paper has aimed to evaluate the air pollution emissions from maritime transportation arrive in/depart from Port of Incheon using two different approaches; fuel-based (Tier 1) and activity-based (Tier 3) methodologies. So far, Tier 1 or 2 level of estimation approaches, based on the fuel consumption provided by national fuel supply statistics, have been reasonably supported for environmentalists and policy makers at national level of emission inventory analysis, even for the global analysis. When considering the local air quality such as in a port area, however, the fuel based approach would not be properly estimating the shipping air emission sector due to the characteristic of maritime transportation. In this study, the fuel-based air emission inventory provided by Clean Air Policy Support System (CAPSS), South Korea was compared and analyzed with the activity-based emission estimation produced by Portal Air Quality Management System (PAQman©). As a result, there discovered a significant gap in the air pollution emissions between fuel-based and activity-based estimations. The findings in this study implies the necessity and significance of local/regional level focused implementation for air quality improvement and regulatory framework especially in a port-city region e.g. Incheon. Although this paper still contains some limitations and assumption described, the results are confident enough to emphasize the application of the activity-based shipping emission estimation approach to discover the potential limitation, which has been unknown and not listed on the national air emission inventory using fuel-based approach.