The present study aims to characterize both the emission and the meteorological context of the metropolitan area of Naples. First these data are presented by emission inventories and literature studies, then are modelled with specific tools. The final goal of these simulations is to assess mobility scenarios in the study area, which will be the focus of the next year’s research.

A particular focus will be given to the impact of emissions from maritime transport, a novel element in this research activity but already analysed in the Sustainable Mobility and Interaction with the Energy System project. From the modelling point of view, the case study on the city of Naples, like the one of Milan, is nested in a coarser resolution a national-scale system, previously implemented at RSE.

The high-resolution modelling characterization of the city of Naples is complementary to the one of Milan since even if the two metropolitan areas share common aspects such as high population density and high emission pressure, they have very different characteristics, such as orography and geographic location, one being placed in the Po Valley and the other in a coastal area.

This first part of this study is based on the characterization of the study area from emission inventories and literature studies. Then meteorological conditions for a reference year are simulated with WRF model, with a spatial resolution of 1 km and an hourly time step.

The simulation’s accuracy results are assessed through the validation process with observed data. These meteorological fields will be used as input variables for simulating the dispersion of air pollutants using the air quality model during the next year of research. Another important input for the air quality model is provided by 1 km gridded emission fields, which are estimated from emission inventories.

Here we show the first steps of the spatialization process which is addressed preliminarily by defining calculation domains and mapping emission inventories. As emission inventory we use the EMEP (European Monitoring and Evaluation Programme) air pollutant emission inventory downscaled at a higher resolution in the framework of the European LIFE-REMY Project.

The document is available on the site in Italian