Analysis of emission abatement scenario to improve urban air quality

Abstract

Air quality in Warsaw is mainly affected by two classes of internal polluting sources: transportation and municipal sector emissions, apart from external pollution inflow. Warsaw authorities prepared strategies of mitigating emissions coming from both these sectors. In this study we analyze effects of the implementation of these strategies by modeling air pollution in Warsaw using several mitigation scenarios. The applied model, operating on a homogeneous discretization grid, forecasts the annual average concentrations of individual pollutants and the related population health risk. The results reveal that the measures planned by the authorities will cause almost 50% reduction of the residents’ exposure to NOx pollution and almost 23% reduction of the exposure to CO pollution due to the transport emissions, while the residents’ exposure reductions due to the municipal sector are 10% for PM10, 15% for PM2.5, and 26% for BaP. The relatively smaller reductions due to municipal sector are connected with high transboundary inflow of pollutants (38% for PM10, 45% for PM2.5, 36% for BaP, and 45% for CO). The implementation of the discussed strategies will reduce the annual mean concentrations of NOx and PM2.5 below the limits of the Ambient Air Quality Directive. Despite the lower exposure reduction, the abatement of municipal sector emissions results in a very significant reduction in health risks, in particular, in the attributable mortality and the DALY index. This is due to the dominant share of municipal pollution (PM2.5 in particular) in the related health effects.

Keywords

• scenario analysis
• urban air quality
• emission abatement
• euro norm limits
• public health risk