Regional Air Pollutant Inventory Development System (RAPIDS)

Background

As the principle component of the Great Lakes Regional Air Toxic Emissions Inventory project, the Regional Air Pollutant Inventory Development System (RAPIDS) is the first ever multi-jurisdictional pollutant emissions inventory software that has been developed. This software is an important product of the binational steering committee effort to design and implement a regional inventory containing sources of toxic air contaminants. RAPIDS was originally tested by Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin in their joint development of the Southwest Lake Michigan Pilot Study. The focus of the study was on the Commission defined list of 49 toxic pollutants, in addition to several other important nontoxic compounds. Now, RAPIDS is used by each Great Lakes state and Province of Ontario. The latest regional inventory for 1997 contains over 80 toxic pollutants for point, area, and mobile (onroad and nonroad source) emissions. For the 1999 effort, all 188 Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAP) as identified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will be inventoried.

The latest release of RAPIDS (Version 2.4.1) has been updated to include, among other things, the ability to export emissions data in a format compatible with the U.S. EPA's National Emissions Inventory (NEI). Since the 1999 national inventory, all states are required to submit emissions data in this format, which makes RAPIDS one of the most progressive emissions inventory systems available.

The RAPIDS regional data repository is located at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Great Lakes National Program Office (GLNPO). GLNPO, as part of its commitment to a multi-media approach to abating pollution in the Great Lakes, houses the regional inventory as a service to the Great Lakes states to help ensure that the RAPIDS database is accessible to the states, federal, and academic researchers via the Internet.

• Overview of the RAPIDS System

Software Download

Download RAPIDS 2.4.1 Software and Related Documentation

RAPIDS software, source code, and documentation developed by the Great Lakes states are available to all interested parties through the Great Lakes Commission free of charge. All files are self-extracting zip archives.

RAPIDS 2.4.1 Self-extracting (Zip file)
RAPIDS 2.4.1 Release notes (DOC)
System Documentation
RAPIDS Data Release
RAPIDS Data Patches
Installation Notes

Related Documents
Documents in portable document format (PDF) and can be viewed using Adobe Acrobat Reader. Zipped archives are in Microsoft Word format.