When you go outside your house in the morning to get fresh air, you will feel fresh and be ready for a new day if your house located in rural or somewhere does not have many of traffics, industries, factories, and even smokers. On the other hand, if you come outside of your house in the morning, and you are in the middle of a lot of traffics, you will feel different because you inhale emission gases. Both nature and human have been producing emissions to the world. However, humans have become the majority of emissions producers by daily activities. Vehicles such as cars, trucks, and buses are necessary for people to do their activities. According to US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), these vehicles produce emissions gases which include Particulate Matter (PM), Hydrocarbon (HC), Nitrogen Oxide (NO_x), Carbon monoxide (CO), Sulfur dioxide (SO₂), and Carbon dioxide (CO₂) to the atmosphere. These emissions are a main cause for global warming. Moreover, these emissions can be harmful to humans’ health if we inhale these gases over than safety levels which represent by Search Results US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). All types of vehicle need the combustion process for driving engines. The combustion process will never be perfect, and the incomplete combustion process will produce emission gases into the atmosphere.

Amounts of emissions in each area will not be the same, you will not know how much emission gases you are getting in the area where you live, in specific time, and how harmful at that moment and area. You are definitely not ready to protect yourself or avoid these emissions. EPA created Motor Vehicle Emissions simulators (MOVES) for measuring emissions that are produced from vehicles. According to EPA, MOVES can be measured in different scales including national, county and project scale. The smallest scale for the MOVES is the project scale which is still a large scale for people to know if they work or live in small area. Not knowing emission gases in specific area and time becomes an issue for all kinds of workers, travelers, students, pedestrians, and especially people who work outdoor. These people do not have any idea how much emissions they will get in one day, one hour, one minute, or if the emissions have high concentration, people can be dead in a few seconds. Technically, MOVES cannot provide enough specific detail.

There are a few researches have been done by using MOVES as a main tool for calculating the emissions from vehicle in specific region. Past research has used the MOVES model, created by EPA and the Federal Highway Administration, to estimate vehicle emissions. For instance, “Modeling Concentrations of Air Toxics near Intersections and Freeways in Florida” by K. Westerlund and C.Cooper used the Motor Vehicle Emission Simulator (MOVES) to estimate the emissions near Intersections and Freeways in Florida. However, MOVES will report the emission data in large to medium scale proportions (based largely on vehicle miles traveled data), which may not be representative of true emissions on a much smaller / localized scale. So, to develop this research, more efficient predictors of vehicular emissions should be included (Westerlund at el. 2013). Using geography systems to estimate vehicular emissions is another method that has been studied, but this approach still does not include important traffic and concentration influencing  inputs such as roadway features, wind speed and direction at specific times (Singleton, 2014).

The aim of this research is to provide a better understanding of the relationship between all transportation characteristics that can be possibly applied and vehicular emissions at specific location and specific times. Also, weather conditions including temperature, humidity, air pressure, wind speed and wind direction could be another factor that can affect emission gases. This could ultimately lead to a model that better reflects the local population’s exposure to emissions throughout the day. This is important because many people travel during morning rush hour by driving, biking and walking. They may be unknowingly exposed to harmful amounts of emissions not reported accurately by regional monitoring stations nor estimated realistically by current emission models.