Abstract
Particulate matters (PM) at the pedestrian level significantly raises the health impacts in the compact urban environment of Hong Kong. A detailed investigation of the fine-scale spatial variation of pedestrian-level PM is necessary to assess the health risk to pedestrians in the outdoor environment. However, the collection of PM data is difficult in the compact urban environment of Hong Kong due to the limited amount of roadside monitoring stations and the complicated urban context. In this study, we measured the fine-scale spatial variability of the PM in three of the most representative commercial districts of Hong Kong using a backpack outdoor environmental measuring unit. Based on the measurement data, 13 types of geospatial interpolation methods were examined for the spatial mapping of PM2.5 and PM10 with a group of building geometrical covariates. Geostatistical modelling was adopted as the basis of spatial interpolation of the PM. The results show that the original cokriging with the exponential kernel function provides the best performance in the PM mapping. Using the fine-scale building geometrical features as covariates slightly improves the interpolation performance. The study results also imply that the fine-scale, localized pollution emission sources heavily influence pedestrian exposure to PM.
Highlights
Over the past few decades, the adverse impacts of urban air pollution on public health have been increasingly identified as a global problem [1,2]
A total of 13 types of geospatial interpolation methods were examined for the spatial mapping of PM2.5 and PM10 with a group of building geometrical/urban setting covariates
Using a self-assembled backpack outdoor environmental measuring unit, we investigated the fine-scale spatial variability of particulate matters (PM) in three of the most representative commercial districts of Hong Kong
Summary
Over the past few decades, the adverse impacts of urban air pollution on public health have been increasingly identified as a global problem [1,2]. Pedestrians in the urban outdoor space are more and more often exposed to harmful ambient environments with different air pollution sources (including but not limited to the traffic-related pollution, household air pollution, and commercial cooking smoke exhaust from roadside buildings) [3]. In a highly urbanized area, the dense building clusters form street canyons with heavy motor-traffic flows. Under such circumstance, the air movements are stagnant [6] and the pollutant dispersion is significantly decelerated [7]. The health risks of pollution exposure in such pollutant-concentrated street environment will be considerably increased [8]
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