scholarly journals Mapping Carbon Monoxide Pollution of Residential Areas in a Polish City

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (18) ◽  
pp. 2885
Author(s):  
Janusz Kwiecień ◽  
Kinga Szopińska

Road traffic is among the main sources of atmospheric pollution in cities. Maps of pollutants are based on geostatistical models using a digital model of the city along with traffic parameters allowing for ongoing analyses and prediction of the condition of the environment. The aim of the work was to determine the size of areas at risk of carbon monoxide pollution derived from road traffic along with determining the number of inhabitants exposed to excessive CO levels using geostatistical modeling on the example of the city of Bydgoszcz, a city in the northern part of Poland. The COPERT STREET LEVEL program was used to calculate CO emissions. Next, based on geostatistical modelling, a prediction map of CO pollution (kg/year) was generated, along with determining the level of CO concentration (mg/m3/year). The studies accounted for the variability of road sources as well as the spatial structure of the terrain. The results are presented for the city as well as divided into individual housing estates. The level of total carbon monoxide concentration for the city was 5.18 mg/m3/year, indicating good air quality. Detailed calculation analyses showed that the level of air pollution with CO varies in the individual housing estates, ranging from 0.08 to 35.70 mg/m3/year. Out of the 51 studied residential estates, the limit value was exceeded in 10, with 45% of the population at risk of poor air quality. The obtained results indicate that only detailed monitoring of the level of pollution can provide us with reliable information on air quality. The results also show in what way geostatistical tools can be used to map the spatial variability of air pollution in a city. The obtained spatial details can be used to improve estimated concentration based on interpolation between direct observation and prediction models.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farid RAHAL ◽  
Noureddine BENABADJI ◽  
Mohamed BENCHERIF ◽  
Mohamed Menaouer BENCHERIF

Abstract In Algeria, air pollution is classified as a major risk by the law. However, this risk is underestimated because there is no operational network for measuring air quality on a continuous basis.Despite the heavy investments made to equip several cities with these measurement systems, they are out of order due to a lack of continuous financial support.The alternative to the absence of these air pollution measurement networks can come from the recent development of electrochemical sensor technologies for air quality monitoring which arouses a certain interest because of their miniaturization, low energy consumption and low cost.We developed a low-cost outdoor carbon monoxide analyzer called APOMOS (Air pollution Monitoring System) based on electrochemical sensor managed by microcontroller. An application developed with the Python language makes it possible to manage process and analyze the collected data.In order to validate the APOMOS system, the recorded measurements are compared with measurements taken by a conventional analyzer.Comparison of the measurements resulting from conventional analyzer and those resulting from the APOMOS system gives a coefficient of determination of 98.39 %.Two versions of this system have been designed. A fixed version and another embedded, equipped with a GPS sensor. These 2 variants were used in the city of Oran in Algeria to measure the concentration of carbon monoxide continuously.The targeted pollutant is carbon monoxide. However, the design of the APOMOS system allows its evolution in an easy way in order to integrate other sensors concerning the various atmospheric pollutants.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xueyuan Wang ◽  
Yuping Wang ◽  
Zhijian Zhang ◽  
Jingwei Li

Abstract Many cities in China have invested the city’s rail transit system to reduce urban air pollution and traffic congestion. Earlier studies rarely compare the effects of rail transit on urban air quality in different cities, providing little guidance to urban planners in solving traffic congestion and air quality. By using the rail transit lines in Chengdu and Nanchang as case studies, this paper attempts to examine the effect of rail transit on air pollution. Data were collected from 18 monitoring stations distributed along the chosen rail transit lines in both cities during the period 2014 to 2016 and analyzed using the regression discontinuity design to address the potential endogenous location of subway stations. The results show that subway opening in Nanchang has a better reductions from automobile exhaust than that in Chengdu, specifically, carbon monoxide pollution, one key tailpipe pollutant, experienced a 10.23% greater reduction after Nanchang Metro Line 1 opened. On the contrary, the point estimate for carbon monoxide in Chengdu is 22.42% and statistically significant at the 1% level. Nanchang Metro Line 1 does play an important role in road traffic externalities, but the benefit was not huge enough to change the overall air quality. On the contrary, the opening of the Chengdu Metro Line 4 is unlikely to yield improvements in air quality.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (8) ◽  
pp. 9-15
Author(s):  
Mikulski Maciej

The article presents the problem of air pollution in polish cities on the example of Cracow. The focus was on one of the corrective actions taken by the city – free-fare public transport during high air pollution. Changes in the city's approach to this service since 2015 and consequences for the city budget were presented. Then, the efficiency of free-fare public transport in attracting new passengers was considered. The example of the Nysa town was cited, which introduced such permission for car drivers, but withdrew it three years later. In the next step, the concentration of air pollution before and after the activation of free-fare public transport in the heating season 2018/2019 was analyzed. Particulate matter PM10, nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide were taken into account. There was no constant relationship between the changes in the level of these pollutants in the air and the full-paid (or fare-free) public transport. There is also no reason for the need to change parameters based on witch the fare-free public transport is activated. Finally, the necessity of further efforts of central and local authorities to improve air quality as well as further research on sources of air pollution and efficiency of undertaken actions was emphasized. Keywords: fare-free public transport, air pollution, environmental protection


2016 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 326-336 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amelija Djordjevic ◽  
Goran Ristic ◽  
Nenad Zivkovic ◽  
Branimir Todorovic ◽  
Sladjan Hristov ◽  
...  

Background/Aim. Analysis of air quality in Serbia indicates that the city of Nis belongs to a group of cities characterized by the third category of air quality (excessive air pollution). The aim of the study was to analyze the degree of causality between ambient air quality affected by particulate matter of 10 ?m (PM10) and carbon monoxide (CO) and the incidence of respiratory diseases in preschool children in the city of Nis. Methods. We quantified the influence of higher PM10 concentrations and carbon monoxide comprising motor vehicle exhausts in the city of Nis on the occurrence of unwanted health effects in preschool children by means of the hazard quotient (HQ), individual health risk (Ri), and the probability of cancer (ICR). The methodology used was according to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and it included basic scientific statistical methods, compilation methods, and the relevant mathematical methods for assessing air pollution health risk, based on the use of attribute equations. Results. Measurement of ambient air pollutant concentrations in the analyzed territory for the entire monitoring duration revealed that PM10 concentrations were significantly above the allowed limits during 80% of the days. The maximum measured PM10 concentration was 191.6 ?g/m3, and carbon monoxide 5.415 mg/m3. The incidence of respiratory diseases in the experimental group, with a prominent impact of polluted air was 57.17%, whereas the incidence in the control group was considerably lower, 41.10 %. There were also significant differences in the distribution of certain respiratory diseases. Conclusion. In order to perform good causal analysis of air quality and health risk, it is very important to establish and develop a system for long-term monitoring, control, assessment, and prediction of air pollution. We identified the suspended PM10 and CO as ambient air pollutants causing negative health effects in the exposed preschool children population.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 625-647 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias Wolf ◽  
Lasse H. Pettersson ◽  
Igor Esau

Abstract. Urban air quality is one of the most prominent environmental concerns for modern city residents and authorities. Accurate monitoring of air quality is difficult due to intrinsic urban landscape heterogeneity and superposition of multiple polluting sources. Existing approaches often do not provide the necessary spatial details and peak concentrations of pollutants, especially at larger distances from monitoring stations. A more advanced integrated approach is needed. This study presents a very high-resolution air quality assessment with the Parallelized Large-Eddy Simulation Model (PALM), capitalising on local measurements. This fully three-dimensional primitive-equation hydrodynamical model resolves both structural details of the complex urban surface and turbulent eddies larger than 10 m in size. We ran a set of 27 meteorological weather scenarios in order to assess the dispersion of pollutants in Bergen, a middle-sized Norwegian city embedded in a coastal valley. This set of scenarios represents typically observed weather conditions with high air pollution from nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and particulate matter (PM2.5). The modelling methodology helped to identify pathways and patterns of air pollution caused by the three main local air pollution sources in the city. These are road vehicle traffic, domestic house heating with wood-burning fireplaces and ships docked in the harbour area next to the city centre. The study produced vulnerability maps, highlighting the most impacted districts for each weather and emission scenario. Overall, the largest contribution to air pollution over inhabited areas in Bergen was caused by road traffic emissions for NO2 and wood-burning fireplaces for PM2.5 pollution. The effect of emission from ships in the port was mostly restricted to the areas close to the harbour and moderate in comparison. However, the results have contributed to implementation of measures to reduce emissions from ships in Bergen harbour, including provision of shore power.


Atmosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 431
Author(s):  
Ayako Yoshino ◽  
Akinori Takami ◽  
Keiichiro Hara ◽  
Chiharu Nishita-Hara ◽  
Masahiko Hayashi ◽  
...  

Transboundary air pollution (TAP) and local air pollution (LAP) influence the air quality of urban areas. Fukuoka, located on the west side of Japan and affected by TAP from the Asian continent, is a unique example for understanding the contribution of LAP and TAP. Gaseous species and particulate matter (PM) were measured for approximately three weeks in Fukuoka in the winter of 2018. We classified two distinctive periods, LAP and TAP, based on wind speed. The classification was supported by variations in the concentration of gaseous species and by backward trajectories. Most air pollutants, including NOx and PM, were high in the LAP period and low in the TAP period. However, ozone was the exception. Therefore, our findings suggest that reducing local emissions is necessary. Ozone was higher in the TAP period, and the variation in ozone concentration was relatively small, indicating that ozone was produced outside of the city and transported to Fukuoka. Thus, air pollutants must also be reduced at a regional scale, including in China.


2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-74
Author(s):  
V. N. Lozhkin ◽  
◽  
O. V. Lozhkina ◽  

Introduction. St. Petersburg is the cultural and sea capital of Russia. The city is characterized by environmental problems typical for the largest cities in the world. It has a technical system for instrumental online monitoring and computational forecasting of air quality. Methods. The system maintains the information process by means of computational monitoring of its current and future state. Results. The paper describes methodological approaches to the generation of instrumental information about the structure and intensity of traffic flows in the urban road network and its digital transformation into GIS maps of air pollution in terms of pollutants standard limit values excess. Conclusion. The original information technology for air quality control was introduced at the regional level in the form of an official methodology and is used in environmental management activities.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corinna Peters

This study assesses changes in mobility behaviour in the City of Barcelona due the COVID‐19pandemic and its impact on air pollution and GHG emissions. Urban transport is an important sourceof global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Improving urban mobility patterns is therefore crucial formitigating climate change. This study combines quantitative survey data and official governmentdata with in‐depth interviews with public administration officials of the City. Data illustrates thatBarcelona has experienced an unprecedented reduction in mobility during the lockdown (a 90%drop) and mobility remained at comparatively low levels throughout the year 2020. Most remarkableis the decrease in the use of public transport in 2020 compared to pre‐pandemic levels, whereas roadtraffic has decreased to a lesser extent and cycling surged at times to levels up to 60% higher thanpre‐pandemic levels. These changes in mobility have led to a radical and historic reduction in airpollution, with NO2 and PM10 concentration complying with WHO guidelines in 2020. Reductions inGHG emissions for Barcelona’s transport sector are estimated at almost 250.000 t CO2eq in 2020 (7%of the City’s overall annual emissions). The study derives policy implications aimed at achieving along‐term shift towards climate‐friendlier, low‐emission transport in Barcelona, namely how torecover lost demand in public transport and seize the opportunity that the crisis brings for reform byfurther reducing road traffic and establishing a 'cycling culture' in Barcelona, as already achieved inother European cities.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wan Jiao ◽  
Gayle Hagler ◽  
Ronald Williams ◽  
Robert Sharpe ◽  
Ryan Brown ◽  
...  

Abstract. Advances in air pollution sensor technology have enabled the development of small and low cost systems to measure outdoor air pollution. The deployment of a large number of sensors across a small geographic area would have potential benefits to supplement traditional monitoring networks with additional geographic and temporal measurement resolution, if the data quality were sufficient. To understand the capability of emerging air sensor technology, the Community Air Sensor Network (CAIRSENSE) project deployed low cost, continuous and commercially-available air pollution sensors at a regulatory air monitoring site and as a local sensor network over a surrounding ~ 2 km area in Southeastern U.S. Co-location of sensors measuring oxides of nitrogen, ozone, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and particles revealed highly variable performance, both in terms of comparison to a reference monitor as well as whether multiple identical sensors reproduced the same signal. Multiple ozone, nitrogen dioxide, and carbon monoxide sensors revealed low to very high correlation with a reference monitor, with Pearson sample correlation coefficient (r) ranging from 0.39 to 0.97, −0.25 to 0.76, −0.40 to 0.82, respectively. The only sulfur dioxide sensor tested revealed no correlation (r  0.5), step-wise multiple linear regression was performed to determine if ambient temperature, relative humidity (RH), or age of the sensor in sampling days could be used in a correction algorithm to improve the agreement. Maximum improvement in agreement with a reference, incorporating all factors, was observed for an NO2 sensor (multiple correlation coefficient R2adj-orig = 0.57, R2adj-final = 0.81); however, other sensors showed no apparent improvement in agreement. A four-node sensor network was successfully able to capture ozone (2 nodes) and PM (4 nodes) data for an 8 month period of time and show expected diurnal concentration patterns, as well as potential ozone titration due to near-by traffic emissions. Overall, this study demonstrates a straightforward methodology for establishing low-cost air quality sensor performance in a real-world setting and demonstrates the feasibility of deploying a local sensor network to measure ambient air quality trends.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivo Suter ◽  
Lukas Emmenegger ◽  
Dominik Brunner

<p>Reducing air pollution, which is the world's largest single environmental health risk, demands better-informed air quality policies. Consequently, multi-scale air quality models are being developed with the goal to resolve cities. One of the major challenges in such model systems is to accurately represent all large- and regional-scale processes that may critically determine the background concentration levels over a given city. This is particularly true for longer-lived species such as aerosols, for which background levels often dominate the concentration levels, even within the city. Furthermore, the heterogeneous local emissions, and complex dispersion in the city have to be considered carefully.</p><p>In this study, the impact of processes across a wide range of scales on background concentrations over Switzerland and the city of Zurich was modelled by performing one year of nested European and Swiss national COSMO-ART simulations to obtain adequate boundary conditions for gas-phase chemical, aerosol and meteorological conditions for city-resolving simulations. The regional climate chemistry model COSMO-ART (Vogel et al. 2009) was used in a 1-way coupled mode. The outer, European, domain, which was driven by chemical boundary conditions from the global MOZART model, had a 6.6 km horizontal resolution and the inner, Swiss, domain one of 2.2 km. For the city scale, a catalogue of more than 1000 mesoscale flow patterns with 100 m resolution was created with the model GRAMM, based on a discrete set of atmospheric stabilities, wind speeds and directions, accounting for the influence of land-use and topography. Finally, the flow around buildings was solved with the CFD model GRAL forced at the boundaries by GRAMM. Subsequently, Lagrangian dispersion simulations for a set of air pollutants and emission sectors (traffic, industry, ...) based on extremely detailed building and emission data was performed in GRAL. The result of this nested procedure is a library of 3-dimensional air pollution maps representative of hourly situations in Zurich (Berchet et al. 2017). From these pre-computed situations, time-series and concentration maps can be obtained by selecting situations according to observed or modelled meteorological conditions.</p><p>The results were compared to measurements from air quality monitoring network stations. Modelled concentrations of NO<sub>x</sub> and PM compared well to measurements across multiple locations, provided background conditions were considered carefully. The nested multi-scale modelling system COSMO-ART/GRAMM/GRAL can adequately reproduce local air quality and help understanding the relative contributions of local versus distant emissions, as well as fill the space between precise point measurements from monitoring sites. This information is useful for research, policy-making, and epidemiological studies particularly under the assumption that exceedingly high concentrations become more and more localised phenomenon in the future.</p>


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