2.17.4. Create Air Quality Data Input Files

Movesmrg is a new, mobile-sources-only program, loosely based on the SMOKE program Smkmerge, that combines the intermediate files produced by the other SMOKE programs (i.e., SmkInven, Grdmat, Spcmat, TEMPORAL). The movesmrg program is discussed in detail in Section 6.10, “Movesmrg. Similar to Smkmerge, the main goal of Movesmrg is to create (1) gridded, speciated, hourly air quality model-ready input files and (2) county-level SCC summaries. The primary difference between Movesmrg and Smkmerge is that Movesmrg uses the SMOKE Formatted MOVES emission rate lookup tables to compute emissions on the fly, by multiplying the emissions factors by hourly VMT (for RPD) or by monthly or annual vehicle populations (for RPV or RPP).

Movesmrg must be run three times to compute on-roadway and off-network (including vapor venting) emissions processes individually, since the emission rate calculation methods in SMOKE for these categories are quite different. Once all three emissions processes have been computed, the emission output files can be merged (optionally along with other 2 D sectors separate from onroad) using MRGGRID, which combines any number of 2 D or 3 D hourly, gridded, and speciated emission data files. See the section Section 6.12, “Mrggrid for more details on the above programs.