Air pollution associated with airports has always been essential for its environmental impact assessment. One of its most ignored pollution sources is the transportation linking the airport to the other parts of the city. For the Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA), ground transportation, which is an indispensable part of the transportation solution, is in need of further assessments. The first part of such assessment is the traffic characteristics of ground side vehicles and the associated emissions thereof. The second part is to visually display the spatial distribution of pollutants. For the first part, multiple sources of traffic characteristics were integrated together. Traffic volume of vehicles at different parts of the HKIA; Vehicle type composition of the concerned v...[ Read more ]

Air pollution associated with airports has always been essential for its environmental impact assessment. One of its most ignored pollution sources is the transportation linking the airport to the other parts of the city. For the Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA), ground transportation, which is an indispensable part of the transportation solution, is in need of further assessments. The first part of such assessment is the traffic characteristics of ground side vehicles and the associated emissions thereof. The second part is to visually display the spatial distribution of pollutants. For the first part, multiple sources of traffic characteristics were integrated together. Traffic volume of vehicles at different parts of the HKIA; Vehicle type composition of the concerned vehicles; traffic pattern of different vehicles at different times of a day. Such information is then processed to assign the appropriate emission factors of different pollutants, which are produced by the Hong Kong Environmental Protection Department and stored in the EMission-FACtor-Hong Kong (EMFAC- HK) system. After calculating the pollution emitted, the spatial distribution is drawn through Geographic Information System (GIS) for visualization. Visualization results reflect the ground traffic nature echoing the airport’s allocation of facilities, showing that the passenger vehicles are concentrated at the eastern part of the airport whereas the goods and heavy-duty vehicles concentrates westward. This also shapes the pollution distribution of NOx and PM2.5. Such assessments assist the estimation of vehicle traffic characteristics and its environmental impact on the overall air pollution problem on the HKIA, and in such way assist in devising counter-measures to be implemented in necessary policies like fuel control policies and vehicle traffic control policies by type.