Title: Procedures used by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US-EPA) to develop and adopt newer dispersion models

Authors: R.H. Schulze

Addresses: Trinity Consultants Inc., Suite 1200, 12801 North Central Expressway, Dallas, TX 75243, USA

Abstract: This paper summarises the management and procedural issues that led to the successful development of AERMOD and CALPUFF and how they will come to be approved regulatory models by the US-EPA in the next few months. The legal requirements for constantly updating models is contained in the 1977 Clean Air Act that requires the US-EPA to publish a ||Modelling Guideline|| and to hold a hearing every three years on that Guideline. In 1991, the American Meteorological Society (AMS) formed a committee with the USEPA in an effort to improve models. From the effort, AERMOD was developed along with its meteorological pre-processor. The history of this technical project will provide insight to others who embark on similar efforts in Europe or other countries.

Keywords: air quality; dispersion modelling; modelling guideline; prognostic wind field; regulatory use.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEP.2001.000643

International Journal of Environment and Pollution, 2001 Vol.16 No.1/2/3/4/5/6, pp.483-494

Published online: 07 Jul 2003 *

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