Abstract
A computationally efficient source inversion algorithm was developed and applied with the Lagrangian atmospheric dispersion model DIPCOT. In the process of source location estimation by minimizing a correlation-based cost function, the algorithm uses only the values of the time-integrated concentrations at the monitoring stations instead of all of the individual measurements in the full concentration-time series, resulting in a significant reduction in the number of integrations of the backward transport equations. Following the source location estimation the release start time, duration and emission rate are assessed. The developed algorithm was verified for the conditions of the ETEX-I (European Tracer Experiment—1st release). Using time-integrated measurements from all available stations, the distance between the estimated and true source location was 108 km. The estimated start time of the release was only about 1 h different from the true value, within the possible accuracy of estimate of this parameter. The estimated release duration was 21 h (the true value was 12 h). The estimated release rate was 4.28 g/s (the true value was 7.95 g/s). The estimated released mass almost perfectly fitted the true released mass (323.6 vs. 343.4 kg). It thus could be concluded that the developed algorithm is suitable for further integration in real-time decision support systems.
Highlights
IntroductionThe advanced and mathematically rigorous approach of solving inverse atmospheric dispersion problems was developed by Marchuk [5] based on adjoint equations of atmospheric transport, while Pudykiewicz et al [6] applied this method for the global atmospheric transport problem following an hypothetical nuclear test
We describe scribe the model setup for the conditions of the experiment and the source inversion scethe model setup for the conditions of the experiment and the source inversion scenarios narios and present the of results of the calculations
In the first set (SI-1) we used all of the 3 h measurements from a reduced set of the stations that are available for ETEX-I
Summary
The advanced and mathematically rigorous approach of solving inverse atmospheric dispersion problems was developed by Marchuk [5] based on adjoint equations of atmospheric transport, while Pudykiewicz et al [6] applied this method for the global atmospheric transport problem following an hypothetical nuclear test Following those pioneering works, the scientific community has made substantial progress towards solving the problem of locating an unknown source releasing a hazardous atmospheric pollutant through developing source inversion methods in particular for cases of regionalscale dispersion [3,7,8,9,10,11,12]. The source inversion methods have reached a relatively high level of sophistication, and during the recent incidents involving radioactive substances, such as detection of Ru-106 over the territory of Eurasia in the fall of 2017, they were successfully applied by researchers from different countries [8,9,10,11,12]
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