Assessment of Environmental Impact of Emission Sources in Integrated Air Quality Models

Abstract

The quantitative evaluation of environmental impact of emission sources is an important step of integrated modeling and decision support. The problem is especially difficult in case of a complex, multi-source emission field. The ap- proach discussed in the paper is based on the forecasts of Eulerian type models of air pollution transport. The aim is to get a quantitative assessment of the contribution of the selected sources, according to the specified, environmental cost function. The approach utilizes the optimal control technique for distributed parameter systems. The adjoint equation, related to the main transport equation of the forecasting model, is applied to calculate the sensitivity of the cost func- tion to the emission intensity of the specified sources. An example implementation of a regional scale, multi-layer dy- namic model of SO2 transport is discussed as the main forecasting tool. The test computations have been performed for a set of the major power plants in a selected industrial region of Poland.