The GAINS model
These pages document the Greenhouse Gas and Air Pollution INteractions and Synergies (GAINS) model hosted in IIASA. Launched since 2006, GAINS has been developed as a tool to identify emission control strategies that achieve given targets on air quality and greenhouse gas emissions at least costs. GAINS considers measures for the full range of precursor emissions that cause negative effects on human health via the exposure of fine particles and ground-level ozone, damage to vegetation via excess deposition of acidifying and eutrophying compounds, as well as ten air pollutants and six of the seven greenhouse gases included in the Kyoto Protocol’s Annex A. In addition, GAINS includes an optimization framework allowing the identification of the least-cost combination of abatement measures for air pollutants and/or greenhouse gases that meet user-specified environmental or health policy targets for each of the above-mentioned endpoints.
Fig. 1 GAINS model overall workflow
This Integrated Assessment Model is extensively used for policy analyses under the Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution (CLRTAP), e.g., for the revision of the Gothenburg Protocol, and by the European Commission for the EU Thematic Strategy on Air Pollution and the air policy review.
This documentation is under constant development and is being expanded with additional information to reflect the latest changes in the modeling framework. The latest version of GAINS is the version 4.03 and has been released in October 2023. The “Release notes summarizing such changes with respect to the previous versions of GAINS can be accessed here.