Research on transportation-related emissions: Current status and future directions

Abstract

Transportation-related emissions are the dominant contributing source of air pollutants today. Considering the negative impacts of transportation-related emissions on our social and economic environment, extensive efforts have been made by researchers and practitioners attempting to find solutions to reduce the emissions. To synthesize these research efforts, researchers have conducted various reviews of relevant studies. However, because of the diversity of the topics, most of existing reviews have only focused on specific and narrowed areas. Furthermore, none of the existing reviews have attempted to summarize the researchers' opinions on the current research and their prospects of the future research directions. Therefore, this paper is intended to fill this gap by conducting an extensive survey of transportation emissions professionals. In the paper, a review of existing research and developments on each of the emissions-related topics is provided, followed by a presentation of the respective survey results and analysis. At the conclusion of these reviews and the analysis of the survey, some future research directions in this field are presented. Copyright 2009 Air & Waste Management Association.