Towards a comprehensive model for the impact of traffic patterns on air pollution

The impact of vehicular traffic on society is huge and multifaceted, including economic, social, health and environmental aspects. The problems is complex and hard to model since it requires to consider traffic patterns, air pollutant emissions, and the chemical reactions and dynamics of pollutants in the low atmosphere. This paper aims at exploring a comprehensive simulation tool ranging from vehicular traffic all the way to environmental impact. As first step in this direction, we couple a traffic second-order model, tuned on NGSIM data, with an nitrogen oxides (NO) emission model and a set of equations for some of the main chemical reactions behind ozone (O) production.