Control of PM10 concentrations over a regional domain

Abstract

The air quality control is a challenging task, due to nonlinear processes that brings to pollution formation and accumulation in the troposphere. Control theory provides useful methodologies and tools to solve this problem. In this paper we propose a two-objective problem to control particulate matter exposure in the troposphere. The approach is based on the minimization of two objectives, namely the Air Quality Index and the emission abatement costs, depending on the decision variables (precursor emission reductions). In particular, this paper focuses on a novel source-receptor model structure able to describe the link between emission and concentration needed by the optimization procedure to describe the Air Quality Index. The methodology has been applied to Northern Italy, a region affected by PMio levels, often exceeding the EU limit value established for health protection.