Environmental burden and health inequity in China's road-based express delivery

This repository contains both gridded emissions inventory data and analysis code used in Li et al. (2025) "Environmental burden and health inequity in China's road-based express delivery" published in Nature Cities.

EMISSIONS DATA

Gridded annual emissions inventory from China's express delivery transportation sector for 2021, developed using large-scale waybill data, geospatial modeling, and detailed calculations.

Contents: 7 GeoTIFF files representing annual emissions totals for different pollutants/GHG

Spatial Coverage and Resolution:

• Geographic Coverage: Mainland China
• Spatial Resolution: 5 arcminutes × 5 arcminutes
• Coordinate System: WGS84 Geographic Coordinate System
• Units: kg/grid cell/year

Temporal Coverage: Annual totals for 2021

ANALYSIS CODE

Route identification, emission calculations, and spatial allocation were performed using standard ArcGIS Network Analyst and Spatial Analysis tools (version 10.8). Custom scripts for emissions analysis and uncertainty quantification:

1. distance_grid_calculation.py

Purpose: Calculates gridded transportation distances by intersecting express delivery routes with a 5 arcminutes resolution spatial grid covering mainland China.

Key Functions:

• Loads multiple route shapefiles and combines them
• Projects data to UTM coordinate system (EPSG:32650) for accurate distance calculations
• Calculates total weighted transportation distance within each grid cell (5 arcminutes resolution)
• Exports results in both UTM and WGS84 projections

2. uncertainty_analysis.m

Purpose: Performs Monte Carlo uncertainty analysis for express delivery emission estimates using 10,000 iterations.

Key Functions:

• Simulates uncertainty in parcel weights, vehicle capacities, and loading ratios
• Propagates uncertainties through emission calculations
• Calculates interquartile ranges (25th-75th percentiles) for emission estimates

CITATION

When using this dataset or code, please cite:

Li, B., Liao, H., Li, K., Lin, J., Gong, C., Liu, H., Li, Y., Chen, L., Yang, Y., Jin, X., Zhao, Y., Wang, T., Jin, J., Dang, R., & Jacob, D.J. (2025). Environmental burden and health inequity in China's road-based express delivery. Nature Cities.

CONTACT

For questions about the code or data, please contact Baojie Li (baojieli@nuist.edu.cn)