2.19. Creating model-ready emissions using MOVES lookup tables

Creating emissions with SMOKE using MOVES lookup tables (i.e., RatePerDistance(RPD), RatePerVehicle(RPV) and RatePerProfile(RPP) ) that are ready for input to an AQM must always include merging the gridding matrices and the speciation matrices. In addition, for RPD emissions based on VMT data by source for CMAQ or MAQSIP, creating the model-ready emissions must also include merging with the hourly VMT created during temporal processing (see Section 2.10, “Temporal processing”). The Movesmrg program performs these processing steps using vector-matrix multiplication to combine the matrices and the hourly emissions vectors from the Temporal program to process RPD MOVES lookup table.

If the overall SMOKE processing setup includes running the nonroad mobile category (or other source categories) as separate runs (see Chapter 4, Using SMOKE Scripts, then Movesmrg cannot be used to combine all source categories into a single output file. Instead, the Mrggrid program would combine the model-ready files from the individual source categories; for example, from separate SMOKE (including Movesmrg) runs for RPD, RPV and RPP mobile sources. There is no limit to the number of model-ready files that Mrggrid can combine into a single model-ready file, and the input files can be 2-D or 3-D.

Movesmrg can be used only for MOVES-based mobile SMOKE source categories. It can use only one of each MOVES lookup table (RPD, RPV and RPV) per run. You can run it to create model-ready files for only one SMOKE source category (RPD, RPV, and RPP). The following list indicates the modes in which Movesmrg can be run:

Many processing steps in SMOKE are independent of one another; for example, chemical speciation and temporal allocation can change without affecting one another. This independence means that when one step changes, another step does not need to be rerun in many cases. However, because Movesmrg combines the data from all of these processing steps to create the model-ready emissions, if one of the earlier steps changes, then the merging step must also be rerun. This includes rerunning Movesmrg to generate model-ready files, and if the Mrggrid program was used, also rerunning that to merge data from multiple source categories together.

Movesmrg also has the ability to input hourly emissions by day of the week and reuse days that are the same. For example, it can input separate hourly emissions files for Monday, a weekday, Saturday, and Sunday, and use these four files to generate model-ready emissions for every day in an entire month. This is accomplished using the MRG_BYDAY SMOKE option, described further in Section 6.8, “Movesmrg. Special treatment can also be given to holidays in this case, since users generally wish to model holidays differently than other days.