Air pollution is a growing problem in mega (and in the increasing number of secondary) cities. This is true for most of the developing country cities in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Policy makers recognize the need for an integrated air quality management (IAQM) framework. Such a framework is especially helpful for city planning and decision making, in response to the growing civic demand for clean air.
A majority of the existing tools for IAQM are complex and data-intensive. There is a need to develop an organized knowledge base to feed into a robust decision support tool that takes into account the various institutional and technical challenges in developing countries.
The main objective of SIM-air is to make use the best available information to arrive at estimates of key parameters (e.g. emissions from various sources) and simulate the interactions between emissions, pollution dispersion, impacts, and management options in an environmental and economic context. The tools under the SIM-air family are integrated, free, and plug & play in nature. The tools are also modular, where user can break-up the tools to evaluate the emissions and pollution control options by sector. Browse the available tools VAPIS, Smart-CART, AQI calculator, and HIC-UP, under the "SIM-air" tab above.
A one-page writeup on the SIM-air model
Download an easy to read "primer on air quality management"
SIM-air V1.3: (2009) - is a demo tool which allows for 1-year snapshot analysis for a city or region divided into a 5x5 domain. The tool is updated to calculate the emissions for five sectors - transport, industry, residential, fugitive, and garbage burning, along with the concentration maps of primary and secondary, health impacts analysis, and optimization of options. The new version also allows for analysis of PM2.5 and PM10 simultaneously, to customize for local needs.
[Download SIM-air V1.3] [Manual]
SIM-air V2.0: Allows for two baseline and one control scenario analysis simultaneously [Download]
Applications of SIM-air across cities in Asia, Africa, and Latin America
