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NARSTO Workshop on Innovative Methods for Emission Inventory Development and Evaluation University of Texas, Austin October 14-17, 2003 |
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Poster 3: Screening of NIF 3.0 Format Submissions to the National Emission Inventory
James Paumier
MACTEC, Inc.
Rhonda Thompson, Anne Pope, Sally Dombrowski
US EPA
With the inclusion of data developed and submitted by State, local, and tribal agencies, the Emission Factor and Inventory Group (EFIG) prepares the National Emission Inventory (NEI), a high quality national inventory of both criteria and toxic pollutants that can be used for a variety of purposes. Regional offices are crucial to the validation of the inventory data provided by these agencies. The quality assurance of an inventory is an iterative process between these agencies and Regional offices with a final QA check by EFIG before loading into the NEI. A software tool with a simple user interface is available for use on a personal computer to identify possible problems with an inventory early in the iterative process.
The tool is currently being upgraded to include emissions quality control (QC) checks for hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) and criteria pollutants. These checks are to include Top ‘10´ lists (10 will be the default, but the number can be modified by the user) for the sum of all HAPs and for specific pollutant categories selected by the user. By selecting two databases, year-to-year comparisons will be possible. The reports generated by this initial version of the QC tool will allow the user to identify those emissions that may be grossly in error.
The purpose of this paper is to review the changes that have occurred between version 2.0 and version 3.0, present some of the QC checking found in the emissions QC tool and possible functions for future updates, the possible inclusion of HAP QC-style reports for criteria pollutants in the QA tool, and the impact of these changes on the QA/QC tool.
Possible topic area: Database Management, Documentation, and Auditing or Emission and Air Quality Modeling