Title: Design methodology for background air pollution monitoring site selection in an urban area

Authors: L.E. Venegas, N.A. Mazzeo

Addresses: National Scientific and Technological Research Council (CONICET), Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Faculty of Sciences, University of Buenos Aires, Ciudad Universitaria, Pab. 2. (1428), Buenos Aires, Argentina. ' National Scientific and Technological Research Council (CONICET), Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Faculty of Sciences, University of Buenos Aires, Ciudad Universitaria, Pab. 2. (1428), Buenos Aires, Argentina

Abstract: We present an air monitoring site selection procedure to determine the minimum number and location of monitoring stations to identify the occurrence of background concentrations greater than a reference value in an urban area. The objective technique reported here is based on the analysis of concentrations estimated using an urban dispersion model for at least one year of hourly information. As an example, we applied the proposed methodology to NO_x emissions in the city of Copenhagen (Denmark). We used the urban dispersion model DAUMOD to obtain horizontal distribution of hourly background concentrations. We obtained that two monitors would be able to identify 97% of the cases with hourly concentrations greater than 0.20 mg/m³ and 95.2% of cases with daily mean concentration greater than 0.12 mg/m³. We found that the differences on network design due to inter-annual variability of atmospheric conditions were less than 5% of the cases of interest.

Keywords: air pollution; air pollution control; atmospheric diffusion model; DAUMOD; monitoring network; network design; urban area; Denmark.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEP.2003.004273

International Journal of Environment and Pollution, 2003 Vol.20 No.1/2/3/4/5/6, pp.185 - 195

Published online: 10 May 2004 *

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