Validation and verification of emission inventory data (chapter 5)

This chapter describes principles and practice of validation and verification of emission inventories as means to establish the quality of an emission inventory. It is argued that the perspective of the user of the data is important in defming the quality of emission data. Monitoring of the progress of (environmental) policy requires a different quality concept from the one that is used in scientific applications and the assessment of proposed abatement strategies. Validation is used for the assessment of the sound, agreed upon, approach of emission data collection, whereas verification refers to the establishment of the truth of the data. Validation therefore should be interpreted as the assessment of the procedural quality and verification as the assessment of the scientific quality