Planning Air Pollution Monitoring Networks in Industrial Areas by Means of Rremote Sensed Images and GIS Techniques

Abstract

Air pollution and its impact have become one of the most important challenge for public authorities. The quantification of emissions as well as their spatial distribution are essential for any air quality program (Aleksandropoulou & Lazaridis, 2004; Sengupta et al., 1996). The selection of the location of monitoring stations is one of the most complex task that occurs in designing air monitoring networks. Several issues, as the harmful effects of pollution on both human health and environment, must be taken into account (Allegrini et al., 2004). The European directive 2008/50/CE of 21 May 2008 on ambient air quality and cleaner air provides criteria about monitoring network. This directive has been issued in order to improve, clarify, simplify and replace the precedents five acts: • Council Directive 96/62/EC of 27 September 1996 on ambient air quality assessment and management; • Council Directive 1999/30/EC of 22 April 1999 relating to limit values for sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and nitrogen oxides, particulate matter and lead in ambient air; • Directive 2000/69/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 November 2000 relating to limit values for benzene and carbon monoxide in ambient air; • Directive 2002/3/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 February 2002 relating to ozone in ambient air and; • Council Decision 97/101/EC of 27 January 1997 establishing a reciprocal exchange of information and data from networks and individual stations measuring ambient air pollution within the Member States. The Directive 2008/50/CE also introduces new air quality objectives and monitoring requirements for PM2.5. In addition to that the EU directive determines criteria for positioning monitoring stations, taking into account a detailed evaluation of environmental features on both local and regional scale. These objectives can be pursued by territorial analysis, which can be performed using a Geographic Information System (GIS). GIS is a computer-based information system that enables storing, modelling, manipulation, retrieval, analysis and presentation of geographically referenced data (Burrough, 2001). In particular this powerful tool allows a