EcoMark: Evaluating models of vehicular environmental impact

The reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from transportation is essential for achieving politically agreed upon emissions reduction targets that aim to combat global climate change. So-called eco-routing and eco-driving are able to substantially reduce GHG emissions caused by vehicular transportation. To enable these, it is necessary to be able to reliably quantify the emissions of vehicles as they travel in a spatial network. Thus, a number of models have been proposed that aim to quantify the emissions of a vehicle based on GPS data from the vehicle and a 3D model of the spatial network the vehicle travels in. We develop an evaluation framework, called EcoMark, for such environmental impact models. In addition, we survey all eleven state-of-the-art impact models known to us. To gain insight into the capabilities of the models and to understand the effectiveness of the EcoMark, we apply the framework to all models.