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URBAN AIR QUALITY MANAGEMENT WORKSHOP

Organised by Proffesor Nicolas Moussiopoulos in
Rhodes, Greece, 3 April 2002

Urban air quality management is one of the main areas of innovative research within SATURN, the EUROTRAC subproject associated with air pollution in urban areas (http://aix.meng.auth.gr/saturn). A complex set of integrated tools is required for assessing and managing urban air quality and for providing direct access to data related to air pollution and measures for its abatement.

The state-of-the-art of these tools was the subject of a workshop organised by SATURN and EURASAP on the occasion of EURO-SUSTAIN, which was a major event during the Hellenic chairmanship of EUREKA (the European initiative for market-oriented, industrial R&D). The proceedings of this workshop will appear as a EUROTRAC Special Report (copies may be ordered through EUROTRAC’s International Scientific Secretariat, e-mail: eurotrac@gsf.de).

During the workshop various integrated applications were presented that allow collecting, generating, managing, archiving and disseminating urban air quality related information. As a main result of this workshop, it was concluded that these tools should include the management of monitoring data, emission inventories, a range of simulation models, forecasting modules, links to energy and transportation models, rule-based expert systems for impact assessment, reporting functions, embedded GIS tools and support for web access. Moreover, when building an operational, flexible, modular and user tailored system, the maximisation of benefits resulting from the usage of existing infrastructures and system components (databases, GIS and Internet applications) at each site should be considered.

Urban air quality management systems aim to provide a tool for the overall assessment of current air quality status and to develop multi-criteria, air pollution abatement strategies for the future, in line with air quality legislation. The air quality related EU Directives provide information on air quality assessment techniques and limit values that should be attained. In particular, they propose monitoring and modelling techniques, since measurements are more accurate, continuous in time but point-wise in space and models, although less accurate than measurements, provide better possibilities for spatial coverage. In the near future the current Daughter Directives will be replaced by new ones which will impose more stringent limit values, and describe a broader field of application including the dissemination of information to the public.

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The first workshop presentation addressed the urban air quality assessment requirements under the new EU air quality directives. Ambiguities herein were discussed, such as the spatial resolution for the limit values mentioned and what this implies for the spatial resolution of models. Moreover, the legislation requires that when air quality levels in a zone exceed certain thresholds, plans or programmes to attain the limit value in 2005 or 2010 must be made without giving prescriptions for developing them. The appropriate prognostic tools should provide information on air quality in future years and allow evaluating changes due to new sources or strategies or measures. The need for considering the spatial and temporal resolution and coverage of limit values calls for a systematic integration of measurements and models. However, neither the current Directives propose a specific, standardised model to be used for such assessments, nor can it be expected that this will change in the future. Useful guidance regarding model selection is provided by EEA's Model Documentation System (http://air-climate. eionet.eu.int/databases/mds.html). Although no technical guidelines exist on how to make future predictions, accuracy (maximum deviation between model and measurement) is specified. Hence EU policy is currently focusing more on specifying the model output rather than pinpointing the use of a specific model. However, a combination of accuracy and credibility of measurements with territory coverage of models is necessary and therefore a dense network of measurements stations must be established1.

Recently the European programme Clean Air for Europe (CAFE) has been launched, which focuses on the technical analysis and policy development and aims to develop a long-term, strategic and integrated policy to protect against the effects of air pollution on human health and the environment. The Integaire project aims to contribute towards certain aspects of the CAFE programme, namely the implementation of air quality legislation at urban level. It was shown that Integaire allows actors from the local and European levels to collaborate in the development of an EU air quality policy and exchange information on approaches and successes on the development and/or implementation of local action and to highlight future research priorities and identify gaps in available information2.

Several workshop presentations were related to specific urban air quality management systems. AirWare is implemented as a modular client-server system and provides an integrated framework for a comprehensive and complete approach, including aspects such as real-time forecasting, emission control optimisation, public information, or scenario analysis for EIA tasks. Its open and distributed architecture allows integrating different simulation models and tools and access over the Internet through standard web browsers therefore enabling the configuration of the framework for a wide range of applications3.

Another system presented was AirQUIS, a map oriented, user-friendly air quality management system to be used in urban and industrial areas. It contains all modules necessary to perform air quality assessment, such as databases for measurement and emissions, dispersion models and exposure module for health and materials. It also enables on line forecasting and air quality management by evaluating measures to improve air quality in a cost-effective way4.

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The OPUS-AIR system highlighted an important feature that should be included in such integrated systems: the knowledge of costs associated with the implementation of air pollution control strategies and the economic benefits (or damages) arising from the adoption of proposed measure(s). OPUS-AIR assesses air pollution abatement measures for local and regional scale and utilizes the results produced by any air quality simulation model. It is based on the multi-pollutant, multi-effect concept and focuses primarily on human receptors so that policy-makers can assess the most cost-effective packages. It is currently being further enriched with appropriate correlation functions in order to allow for the impact of air pollution on buildings, materials and other-than-human receptors5.

The project HEAT was presented as an example of an urban air quality assessment and management system adapted to a specific urban area (Helsinki). The aim is to evaluate traffic flows, emissions from mobile and stationary sources, ambient air and indoor concentrations, exposures to air pollutants and the resulting health effects. The project aims to extend the existing urban air quality modelling system to include the evaluation of pollutant transport from outdoor to indoor air, personal exposures and expected health consequences and to estimate the adverse health effects caused to the population by air pollution, to simulate the burden of disease for each of the scenarios, and to inter-compare their relative public health costs and benefits. The results reveal information on the reliability and accuracy of models and more versatile, reliable and comprehensive information on population exposure to air pollution. Preliminary project results have indicated the importance of PM2.5 in indoor exposure and confirm that overall the smaller the size of the particulate matter the greater the health effects6.

Furthermore, the results of an integrated modelling system were presented which was applied to a Northern Italy domain characterised by complex terrain, high urban and industrial emissions and a close road network. The system is meant to perform a climatological simulation on photochemical pollution and allow estimating AOT indices, useful indicators of ozone exposure. Ozone time series from the air quality networks were analysed through a clustering analysis technique, in order to obtain a set of representative monitoring stations to compare estimated concentrations with measurements. Simulations include the use of 3D meteorological model CALMET, a flexible emission evaluation model POEM and photochemical transport model CALGRID. The initial and boundary conditions were obtained via a nesting procedure from the EMEP Lagrangian Photoxidant Model7.

Another presentation focused on the development of an air quality assessment and management tool, evaluating the air quality impacts from industrial plants (TEAP). In industrial areas, the interest lies in the provision of real-time and forecasting information on concentrations around the plants, useful for the public, environmental authorities and industrial managers. TEAP uses an expert system as a visual and managing interface for the presentation of the MM5 (PSU/NCAR) mesoscale meteorological model and the CMAQ (EPA, Community Multiscale Air Quality Modelling System) model simulation results. Ultimately, the TEAP system will assist industrial managers to optimise emission reduction strategies related to industrial processes8.

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The dissemination of timely and high-quality environmental information produced and managed by urban air quality management systems, was presented through the work of the APNEE project (Air Pollution Network for Early warning and information Exchange in Europe). The project used customed information services for individual user groups and various information channels (mobile-technologies, interactive Internet portals, street panels) to present easy-to-understand and easy-to-access environmental information. Finally the APNEE system reported on the design of information services that are offered as a portal or messaging service by non-governmental and commercial organisations, and used field trials to unveil the vigilance and willingness of the citizen for services on a charge basis9.

The overall structure of an UAQMS was addressed in combination to existing systems operated by city authorities, and taking into account functionality and technology limitations. Modularity and flexibility were underlined as the most important characteristics that an UAQMS should possess, while the importance of user requirements analysis for the elicitation of appropriate functions and citizen related information services was also stressed. A collection of various applications that can be viewed as extensions to existing urban air quality management systems were also presented. These focused on the support of urban air quality management tasks and the dissemination of environmental information, making use of public domain software and wireless communication technologies to develop Internet applications information modules using SMS, WAP and e-mail. As a final step, the importance of the scenario-based urban air quality management and the limitations of the aggregated approaches used were presented10.

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