Quick and Economic Spatial Assessment of Urban Air Quality

Abstract

The main sources of urban air pollution are transport and heating influenced by the background air pollution of the major area. Transport includes emissions from the road traffic, particle resuspension, petrol and gas stations, as well as emissions from ships and harbour traffic, in case of a city harbour. Heating includes emissions from oil or gas incinerators to provide central heating, which operate in houses and other buildings. Oncoming air pollution from any kind of emissions of the major area forms the background levels of the urban air pollution. These emissions may be originated from either anthropogenic or natural sources. Anthropogenic sources include activities of transport (airports, highways and ship emissions), power generation, oil refineries, waste incineration, industries and agriculture. Natural emissions come from area sources (sea, ocean, countryside land, forests) and point sources (volcanoes and territorial cracks). Air pollutants emitted from all these sectors include mainly the primary air pollutants of sulphur dioxide (SO2), carbon monoxide (CO), oxides of nitrogen (NOx), ammonia (NH3), volatile organic compounds (VOC) and particulate matter (PM). Most of the traffic-related emissions are in the fine particulates range, i.e. PM2.5 or of smaller size. Many of the primary air pollutants are deposited, but some of them interact with other air pollutants and form new secondary air pollutants, such as the photochemical air pollutants of ozone (O3), aerosols, nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and other. Although airborne particulates and ozone concern mostly human health, all aforementioned air pollutants (primary and secondary) affect adversely human health, ecosystems biodiversity, crops and forests, built environment, materials and cultural heritage. Besides the cost regarding general environmental damage, the death cost is huge. Several hundreds of thousands of premature deaths, increased hospital admissions, extra medication and millions of lost working days occur each year in Europe. Many developing countries, as China, are taking actions against air pollution. The Chinese policies to reduce SO2 and NOx emissions are similar to those of the European Union (EU). The developed countries, like USA and Japan, are not expected to cause any risk in competiveness to EU countries, because they have similar or more stringent air pollution policies than EU countries (Commission of the European Communities [CEC, 2005]). And of course there are other sources of potential pollutants, like noise causing annoyance to citizens, viruses causing human infections, and radioactive aerosols emitted due to probable failure episodes of nuclear reactors of power plants causing major impacts on major areas even globally