The Emissions Inventory Maintenance Application

The Air Quality Management Decision Support System (AQMDSS) is a comprehensive set of software tools that includes the complete data path from emission inventory development through emissions processing, air quality modeling, and data analysis. The AQMDSS uses the Multimedia Integrated Modeling System (MIMS) as the user interface for setting up and executing the Sparse Matrix Operator Kernel Emissions (SMOKE) processing system, the AMS/EPA Regulatory Model (AERMOD) and its AERMAP and AERMET preprocessors, the Models-3/Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ), and other data preparation and analysis tools. This paper is an update to one that was presented at the 14th Annual Emission Inventory Conference in Las Vegas, NV in 2005.1 At that time, the design phase was complete and implementation was proceeding. The AQMDSS is now installed at the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau (BMEPB) in Beijing, China. First, this paper focuses on the Emissions Inventory Maintenance Application (EIMA) of the AQMDSS. Key features include a relational database implementation of an extended National Emission Inventory (NEI) Input Format (NIF) version 3; menu-driven, multilingual user interface that supports data integrity; security for user access of data; and direct access to data tables via Structured Query Language (SQL). Next, this paper describes how the EIMA was implemented at the BMEPB. We will report our experience with performing bulk data loads into the NIF 3.0 data format using SQL.