Integration of on-board diagnostics with system dynamics to study road transport pollution

Pollution caused by road transport is the major source affecting human health and adversely affects global warming. The main causes of transport pollution are the increase in the number of motor vehicles, inadequate public transport and inefficient transport management. Transport pollution is due to poor combustion of vehicular fuels, improper air/fuel mix ratio, harmful emissions of Hydrocarbon (HC), Carbon monoxide (CO) and Oxides of Nitrogen (NOX). In order to control the level of air pollutants, a number of policies have been activated in India. This paper proposes a system dynamics approach to evaluate and compare various scenarios of road transport system using On Board Diagnostic system integrated model in controlling CO level in air, including vehicle to population ratio variation, impact of law enforcement effectiveness, and conducting awareness campaign to use public transport. Based on the results, it was found that implementation of On-Board Diagnostics (OBD) in all private vehicles intervention interms of law enforcement effectiveness and reducing the number of private vehicles by the implementation of transist incentive policy to adopt public transport proved to be efficient in reducing the CO level in air to a great extent.