A preliminary assessment of population exposures resulting from truck idling at port gates

Abstract

The work presented in this thesis is the contributions to a larger research effort studying emissions associated with port operations. My contribution can be split into three components: literature review, environmental justice mapping, and dispersion modeling. The literature review for this project includes looking at past population exposure studies, past studies for measuring truck emissions, and existing efforts to reduce port emissions. The environmental justice mapping portion of this work includes mapping population demographics for areas surrounding the Port of Los Angeles, Port of Long Beach, Port of Houston, Port of Savannah, and Port of Brunswick. The data used for this section was taken from the US Census Bureau and from the EPA’s EJSCREEN tool and includes data on income, race, housing occupancy, house and family size, age, linguistic isolation, and education. The dispersion modeling component of this analysis looks at emissions from truck drivers queuing at part gates. These emissions were modeled in AERMOD on three different spatial scales and then mapped using ArcGIS’s interpolation tool. The modeling portion of this thesis evaluates the effect vehicle age, meteorological data, and characterization of the roughness parameter has on estimated concentrations.