OPTIMIZING THE MIX OF STRATEGIES FOR CONTROL OF VEHICULAR EMISSIONS

A number of strategies for the control oi vehicular emissions are bein g considered by the Philippine government to address Metropolitan Mani la's air quality problem. An analytical tool is needed for optimizing criteria pollutant reductions given the budgetary constraints. The sim plest approach is to take costs and pollutant removals to be linear wi th each strategy's scale of activity, and this is readily solved as a linear programming problem. Another approach is to use a dynamic syste m of weights which shift with progressive improvements in pollutant em issions. The two approaches yield somewhat different results, suggesti ng the sensitivity of the solution to the assumed weights. The study a lso illustrates the importance of a sound methodology for evaluating p riorities given to different air quality goals. One such methodology m ay involve a polling oi expert panels and the public to gain insight i nto the relative importance given to competing emissions reduction goa ls. An informal polling of resource agency staff was conducted and dis cussed in this paper. The authors take the position that proper planni ng involves tracing intermediate steps to the final outcome and not ju st focusing on the latter.