The MOVES utility scripts are designed to assist the user by automating the proper use of using MOVES emission rate calculations for the purpose of estimating mobile-source emissions for air quality modeling. The MOVES default database has over 100 different tables that store lookup/reference information, conversions/adjustment factors, emissions data, and activity data. MOVES uses MySQL databases to store user inputs, intermediate results and final outputs. The MOVES utility scripts consist of 1) MOVES Driver script and 2) MOVES Post-processing scripts. These scripts are run after the meteorological data processor program (Met4moves) which prepares the spatially and temporally averaged temperatures and relative humidity data used as meteorological input conditions for MOVES and SMOKE using the Meteorology-Chemistry Interface Processor (MCIP) output files.

The MOVES Driver script (Runspec_generator.pl) creates data importer files and importer script and the MOVES batch run script which specifies the characteristic of the particular scenario to be modeled.

The MOVES Post-processing script (Moves2smkEF.pl) formats the MOVES emission rate lookup tables for SMOKE. The second MOVES Post-processing script (gen_8digit_scc.pl) generates an SCC mapping file used when importing activity data in Smkinven. After the MOVES utility scripts are completed, the SMOKE postprocessing program (Movesmrg) estimates emissions from mobile sources using the SMOKE formatted MOVES lookup tables (RPD, RPP, RPV, and RPH) output generated by the MOVES utility scripts and meteorology data from Met4moves.

Movesmrg creates hourly, gridded, speciated air quality model-ready input files. Information about key concepts related to the MOVES utility scripts including Representative Counties, Fuels Months, and Emissions Processes are covered in Section 2.7.4.6, “Representative Counties” and Section 2.7.4.7, “Reference Fuel month” and Section 2.7.4.9, “ MOVES Emission Processes by Emission Rate Tables”