Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Atmospheric Environment journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/atmosenv Implication of activity-based vessel emission to improve regional air inventory in a port area Yongbum Kwon a , Hyoji Lim b , Yongseok Lim c , Heekwan Lee a,b,* a Department of Environmental Engineering, Incheon National University, 119 Academy-ro, Yeonsu-gu, Incheon, Republic of Korea b Asian iNstitute for Environmental Research and enerGY (A.NERGY), Incheon National University, 119 Academy-ro, Yeonsu-gu, Incheon, Republic of Korea c C-Tech, 2009, Daehak-ro 28, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, Republic of Korea ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Shipping pollution Regional emission inventory Estimation approaches CAPSS ABSTRACT This paper has aimed to evaluate the air pollution emissions from maritime transportation arrive in/depart from Port of Incheon using two different approaches; fuel-based (Tier 1) and activity-based (Tier 3) methodologies. So far, Tier 1 or 2 level of estimation approaches, based on the fuel consumption provided by national fuel supply statistics, have been reasonably supported for environmentalists and policy makers at national level of emission inventory analysis, even for the global analysis. When considering the local air quality such as in a port area, however, the fuel based approach would not be properly estimating the shipping air emission sector due to the characteristic of maritime transportation. In this study, the fuel-based air emission inventory provided by Clean Air Policy Support System (CAPSS), South Korea was compared and analyzed with the activity-based emission estimation produced by Portal Air Quality Management System (PAQman © ). As a result, there discovered a significant gap in the air pollution emissions between fuel-based and activity-based estimations. The findings in this study implies the necessity and significance of local/regional level focused implementation for air quality improvement and regulatory framework especially in a port-city region e.g. Incheon. Although this paper still contains some limitations and assumption described, the results are confident enough to emphasize the appli- cation of the activity-based shipping emission estimation approach to discover the potential limitation, which has been unknown and not listed on the national air emission inventory using fuel-based approach. 1. Introduction Transportation contributes a significant proportion of air emissions into the atmospheric environment. Since civilized human society con- tinuously pursues satisfying air quality and well-established manage- ment implementations, policy makers and environmentalists have dealt with the better air quality improvement in different pollution sources e.g. port area (López-Aparicio et al., 2017; Pokhrel and Lee, 2011, 2015; Smith et al., 2014). Maritime air emission has recently become a sig- nificant concern as a major polluting sector, and the Marine Environ- ment Protection Committee (MEPC) under the remit of International Marine Organization (IMO) has addressed environmental issues in- cluding the prevention and management of marine environment from the ship-source pollution such as particulate matters (PM), nitrogen oxides (NO x ), sulfur oxides (SO x ) and greenhouse gases (GHGs) (MEPC, 2008; Skjølsvik et al., 2000). Recent meeting of MEPC agreed several practical implementations that cover determination of emission control areas (EACs), sulfur limit for marine vessel fuel as well as greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions under the Marine Pollution (MARPOL) conven- tion as a part of green port initiative (IMO, 2017). Contrary to the in- dustrial process and air pollution from the road-mobile transport, maritime air emission is more likely to influence on the human society due to the considerable size of emission as well as geographical con- dition. As ship operators have hunted well-located and organized ports, usually closed to the industrial and densely populated area, port-cities are easily exposed to marine vessel emissions and infrastructure burden (Castells Sanabra et al., 2014). Numerous research articles have explored the portal air quality, maritime vessel emission inventories and its human health effects for a long time. Corbett and Fischbeck (1997) estimated global NO x and SO x emissions using marine fuel consumption by different types of marine engines in the early period, when the first attempts for marine en- vironment was addressed from IMO. They also emphasized the im- portance of IMO regulations that address limitation of global emissions and fuel sulfur levels. Corbett and Fischbeck (2000) analyzed the marine vessel emission inventories on the navigable waters including https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosenv.2019.01.036 Received 2 June 2018; Received in revised form 7 December 2018; Accepted 18 January 2019 * Corresponding author. Department of Environmental Engineering, Incheon National University, 119 Academy-ro, Yeonsu-gu, Incheon, Republic of Korea. E-mail addresses: airgroup@inu.ac.kr, hlee@inu.ac.kr (H. Lee). Atmospheric Environment 203 (2019) 262–270 Available online 30 January 2019 1352-2310/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T