Air Quality in Urban Environments in the Eastern Mediterranean

2013 ◽  
pp. 219-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Karanasiou ◽  
N. Mihalopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Air Quality ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Urban Environments

Biometeorological and air quality assessment in an industrialized area of eastern Mediterranean: the Thriassion Plain, Greece

2011 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 737-747 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastasios Mavrakis ◽  
Anastasia Spanou ◽  
Katerina Pantavou ◽  
George Katavoutas ◽  
George Theoharatos ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Air Quality ◽  
Quality Assessment ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Air Quality Assessment

Current Threats to the Environmental Conditions in Cities of the Eastern Mediterranean

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manfred A. Lange
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Environmental Conditions ◽  
Heat Waves ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Liquid Waste ◽  
Dust Storms ◽  
Urban Structures ◽  
Space Cooling

<p>The environmental conditions in urban settings are subject to processes and conditions within cities, on the one hand, and have a strong bearing on the overall conditions and the quality of life of the cities’ inhabitants, on the other. The built environment, in general, and buildings and infrastructure, in particular, play a major role in shaping the urban environment. At the same time, environmental conditions affect strongly the conditions within and outside of buildings.</p><p>The continued growth of cities in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle Eastern (EMME) region, the demise of environmental quality adds to the challenges faced by their inhabitants. Of the many factors contributing to these threats, climate change and its amplification in urban structures, the increasing load of pollutants in air and water and the rising numbers of dust storms as well as the growing amount of solid and liquid waste stand out.</p><p>The significant increase in the number of cars and the rising quantity of energy production has contributed to ever-worsening air quality in EMME cities. More specifically, urban road transport represents one of the major sources of air-borne pollutants in many of these cities and causes substantial threats to the health of their inhabitants.</p><p>The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and the EMME region are major sources of desert dust storms that travel north and east to Europe and Asia, thereby strongly affecting cities and their air quality in the EMME. Dust storms and suspended bacteria and viruses pose serious consequences to communities in the EMME region and are likely to worsen due to ongoing climate change.</p><p>Present and future changes in climate conditions will have numerous adverse effects on the EMME region, in general, and on EMME cities, in particular. This includes extended heat waves as well as enhanced water scarcity for inhabitants and green spaces. In combination with poor air quality, this will cause severe health risks for urban populations as well as the need for increased and extended periods of space cooling in private, commercial and municipal buildings. The greater needs for water and energy in urban structures are interrelated and have been described by the Water-Energy Nexus. The higher demand for water is increasingly satisfied through desalination, which is particularly energy-intensive. The need for additional space cooling during hot spells in cities will require more electricity.</p><p>The high rate of population growth, ever-increasing urbanization, changes in lifestyles and economic expansion in the EMME countries result in steadily increasing volumes of solid and liquid waste. The waste problems are exacerbated by the rising number of displaced persons and refugees in growing camps in some of the EMME countries, particularly, in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. The huge quantity of daily produced sewage sludge in Middle Eastern countries presents a serious challenge due to its high treatment costs and risks to the environment and human health.</p><p>This paper will address some of these challenges, which call for holistic and interdisciplinary efforts to design effective and sustainable adaptation strategies in EMME cities.</p>

scholarly journals PARAMETERS OF INTEREST FOR THE DESIGN OF GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE

2019 ◽  
pp. 92-101
Author(s):  
Marija Šperac ◽  
Dino Obradović
Keyword(s):  
Air Quality ◽  
Urban Environment ◽  
Air Temperature ◽  
Green Infrastructure ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Hydrological Cycle ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Land Surfaces ◽  
Selection Of

The urbanization process significantly reduced the permeability of land surfaces, which affected the changes of runoff characteristics and the relations in the hydrological cycle. In urban environments, the relationships within the hydrological cycle have changed in quantity, in particular: precipitation, air temperature, evaporation, and infiltration. By applying the green infrastructure (GI) to urban environments is beneficial for the water resources and the social community. GI has an effect on the improvement of ecological, economic, and social conditions. Using GI into urban areas increases the permeability of land surfaces, whereby decreasing surface runoff, and thus the frequency of urban floods. It also has a significant influence on the regulation of air quality, water purification, climate change impact, and the changes in the appearance of the urban environment. When planning and designing the GI, it is necessary to identify the type of GI and determine the size and location of the selected GI. Since each urban environment has its own characteristics, it is necessary to analyze them before deciding on the GI. The paper analyzed meteorological parameters (precipitation, air temperature, insolation, air humidity) affecting the selection of GI types, using the specific example of an urban environment – the City of Osijek, Croatia. Significant parameters when designing GI are operation and maintenance These parameters directly affect the efficiency of GI. The proper selection of GI and its location results in maximum gains: the reduction of land surface drainage - drainage of the sewage system, purification and retention of precipitation at the place of production, the improvement of air quality, and the improvement of living conditions in urban environments

scholarly journals Summertime impacts of Eastern Mediterranean megacity emissions on air quality

2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 26657-26690 ◽  
Author(s):  
U. Im ◽  
M. Kanakidou
Keyword(s):  
Air Quality ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Anthropogenic Emissions ◽  
Urban Agglomerations ◽  
Mixing Ratios ◽  
Urban Core ◽  
Local Contribution ◽  
Regional Air Quality ◽  
Inorganic Aerosol

Abstract. Megacities are large urban agglomerations with intensive anthropogenic emissions that have significant impacts on local and regional air quality. In the present mesoscale modeling study, the impacts of anthropogenic emissions from Istanbul and Athens on local and regional air quality in the Eastern Mediterranean are quantified and the responses to hypothetical decentralization scenarios applied to the extended areas of these densely populated regions are evaluated. This study focuses on summertime impacts on air quality. The results show that Athens emissions have larger regional (0.8%) and downwind (2.7% at Finokalia) impacts on O3 than Istanbul emissions that contribute to surface O3 by 0.6% to the domain-mean and 2.1% to the levels at Finokalia. On the opposite, regarding fine particle (PM2.5) levels, Istanbul emissions have larger contribution both inside the megacity itself (75%) and regionally (2.4%) compared to Athens emissions, which have a local contribution of 65% and domain-wide contribution of 0.4%. Biogenic emissions are found to limit the production of secondary inorganic aerosol species due to their impact on oxidant levels. Hypothetical decentralization plans for these urban agglomerations, maintaining the total amount of their anthropogenic emissions constant but homogeneously distributing it over larger "new" extended areas, would result in higher O3 mixing ratios inside the urban core (215% and 26% in Istanbul and Athens, respectively). On the opposite, PM2.5 concentrations would decrease by 67% and 60% in Istanbul and Athens, respectively, whereas they would increase by 10% and 11% in the rural areas of Istanbul and Athens, respectively. Concerning the "new" extended areas, Athens would experience a reduction in O3 mixing ratios by ~2% whereas Istanbul would experience an increase by ~15%. Overall decreases of PM2.5 levels by 32% and 9% are calculated over the Istanbul and Athens "new" extended areas.

scholarly journals A New Wearable System for Sensing Outdoor Environmental Conditions for Monitoring Hyper-Microclimate

Sensors ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 502
Author(s):  
Roberta Jacoby Cureau ◽  
Ilaria Pigliautile ◽  
Anna Laura Pisello
Keyword(s):  
Air Quality ◽  
Environmental Monitoring ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Control Unit ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Physical Parameters ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Rapid Urbanization ◽  
Wearable System ◽  
New Device

The rapid urbanization process brings consequences to urban environments, such poor air quality and the urban heat island issues. Due to these effects, environmental monitoring is gaining attention with the aim of identifying local risks and improving cities’ liveability and resilience. However, these environments are very heterogeneous, and high-spatial-resolution data are needed to identify the intra-urban variations of physical parameters. Recently, wearable sensing techniques have been used to perform microscale monitoring, but they usually focus on one environmental physics domain. This paper presents a new wearable system developed to monitor key multidomain parameters related to the air quality, thermal, and visual domains, on a hyperlocal scale from a pedestrian’s perspective. The system consisted of a set of sensors connected to a control unit settled on a backpack and could be connected via Wi-Fi to any portable equipment. The device was prototyped to guarantee the easy sensors maintenance, and a user-friendly dashboard facilitated a real-time monitoring overview. Several tests were conducted to confirm the reliability of the sensors. The new device will allow comprehensive environmental monitoring and multidomain comfort investigations to be carried out, which can support urban planners to face the negative effects of urbanization and to crowd data sourcing in smart cities.

scholarly journals Size-resolved particle number emissions in Beijing determined from measured particle size distributions

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (19) ◽  
pp. 11329-11348 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenni Kontkanen ◽  
Chenjuan Deng ◽  
Yueyun Fu ◽  
Lubna Dada ◽  
Ying Zhou ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Particle Size ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Particle Number ◽  
Aerosol Particles ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Integrated Assessment Model ◽  
Assessment Model ◽  
Size Distributions ◽  
Particle Size Distributions ◽  
Measured Particle

Abstract. The climate and air quality effects of aerosol particles depend on the number and size of the particles. In urban environments, a large fraction of aerosol particles originates from anthropogenic emissions. To evaluate the effects of different pollution sources on air quality, knowledge of size distributions of particle number emissions is needed. Here we introduce a novel method for determining size-resolved particle number emissions, based on measured particle size distributions. We apply our method to data measured in Beijing, China, to determine the number size distribution of emitted particles in a diameter range from 2 to 1000 nm. The observed particle number emissions are dominated by emissions of particles smaller than 30 nm. Our results suggest that traffic is the major source of particle number emissions with the highest emissions observed for particles around 10 nm during rush hours. At sizes below 6 nm, clustering of atmospheric vapors contributes to calculated emissions. The comparison between our calculated emissions and those estimated with an integrated assessment model GAINS (Greenhouse Gas and Air Pollution Interactions and Synergies) shows that our method yields clearly higher particle emissions at sizes below 60 nm, but at sizes above that the two methods agree well. Overall, our method is proven to be a useful tool for gaining new knowledge of the size distributions of particle number emissions in urban environments and for validating emission inventories and models. In the future, the method will be developed by modeling the transport of particles from different sources to obtain more accurate estimates of particle number emissions.

scholarly journals Unexpected air quality impacts from implementation of green infrastructure in urban environments: A Kansas City case study

2020 ◽  
Vol 744 ◽  
pp. 140960 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuqiang Zhang ◽  
Jesse O. Bash ◽  
Shawn J. Roselle ◽  
Angie Shatas ◽  
Andrea Repinsky ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Air Quality ◽  
Green Infrastructure ◽  
Kansas City ◽  
Urban Environments
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