A Gis Model For Urban Air Quality Analysis

Abstract

Like many big urban centers, Mendoza, a city of about 900,000 inhabitants, has
increasing air pollution mostly from mobile sources. To asses on its air quality, two main
strategies have been developed: the setup of a network of monitoring stations and the
development of a comprehensive model. Continuous monitoring and daily measurements of
main pollutants had been performed since more than 10 years, at different sites, combined
with several measuring campaigns. On the other side, a model, based on a geographical
information system has been developed to evaluate the air quality derived from stationary
and mobile sources. Once the model has been calibrated with the given measurements, the
system is then used to test the compliance to local standard air quality, or to study the
environmental impact of new industries or to determine the changing conditions when vehicle
circulation is increased. This allows characterizing areas with potential increase in air
pollution or improvement in air quality. It is also possible to compute different scenarios by
changing basic information as traffic flow, or stack emission rates