GAINS-Italy, developed in collaboration with IIASA, is an integrated assessment model for the elaboration and assessment of future scenarios and alternatives, aligned with the homonymous European model developed by the IIASA.
GAINS-Italy produces:
- possible scenarios for reducing SO2, NOX, PM, NMVOC, NH3 and greenhouse gas emissions, so as to also consider the interactions between policies relating to air pollution and climate change, both at national and regional level;
- maps relating to the effects of acidification and eutrophication, the damage from tropospheric ozone on vegetation and human health, as well as the damage to human health from exposure of the population to PM2.5 concentrations;
- cost-effectiveness analysis starting from a health or environmental objective for the identification of possible measures to reduce pollutants, estimating, at a regional level, costs, and related reductions in emissions.
To produce national concentration and effect maps, GAINS-Italia uses Atmospheric Transfer Matrices (MTA) which contain a simplified source-receptor link, capable of calculating, as the emissions vary on a regional basis, deposition/concentration and impact maps. The transfer matrices of the GAINS-Italia model are calculated with the SMA (MINNI Atmospheric Modelling System) on the basis of repeated sensitivity tests of the concentrations to variations in emissions.
Furthermore, the emission scenarios produced by the GAINS-Italy model feed the SMA for more detailed analyses, which, together with the MTA, closes the full circularity of the connections between the various components of MINNI.