Abstract
Assessment of harmful impacts and risks of air pollution in case of accidents as well as of long lasting exposition is an important challenge of chemical transport modeling. Sad confirmation of this statement unexpectedly has come from the nuclear power plant accident in Fukushima which occurred while this paper was finalized. Two strategies to comply with the task of impact and risk assessment in extended regions like Central Europe or the Balkans are described. The first one is characterized by application of a single model system to an extended domain. The other one is based on the combined application of several chemical transport models designed for the use in various sub-domains in the region under consideration. Advantages and disadvantages exist for both approaches. For instance, the single model strategy allows unified and harmonized assessment of risks in a larger region, whereas the combined model strategy may pro-vide faster and locally more specific response in emergency cases. The single model approach is treated exploiting applications of the EURAD model system. The combined model approach is a novel way of joint use of chemical transport model systems developed for the Balkans. The models are described and the accuracy of simulations carried out with them is briefly demonstrated by comparison of simulated and observed concentrations of air pollutants. Applications regarding the search of sources for high pollution events and the assessment of risks through known sources are exem-plarily discussed.
Highlights
Air quality is subjected to a manifold of threats which may result in adverse impacts on human health, agriculture and ecosystems
Two ways of assessing risks resulting from air pollution in general and from emission hot spots with the help of chemical transport model systems have been presented
Possible applications to emergency modeling in case of accidental releases from factories dealing with harmful substances have been indicated
Summary
Air quality is subjected to a manifold of threats which may result in adverse impacts on human health, agriculture and ecosystems. The two strategies of emergency modeling and risk assessment discussed are 1) the application of a single model to a large domain (Central Europe and sub-regions in this case) and 2) the combination of several models developed for smaller differing domains in unified form and their application to the integral domain (the Balkans in this case) The comparison of both strategies has been motivated by a project devoted to the development of a modeling system for emergency response to the release of harmful substances with contributions from Albania, Bulgaria, Greece and Romania Deeper insight into the performance of the models and application issues will be given in a follow-up paper
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