Source apportionment of air pollution in urban areas: a review of the most suitable source-oriented models

Abstract

Notwithstanding the improvements already achieved in recent decades through regional and urban scale actions implemented across Europe, air pollution is still a major environment and health concern for Europeans. The quantitative assessment of the different sources of air pollution in regional/urban areas is crucial to support the design of accurate air quality plans. Source apportionment techniques are capable to relate air pollutant concentrations to existing emission sources activities and regions. The selection of the appropriate source apportionment technique to apply to a given area should take into account the ultimate goal of the study. Despite the growing number of studies that include source apportionment techniques, there is still a lack of works that summarise information on this topic in a systematic way. In this work, a literature review of studies applying SA techniques, published between 2010 and 2021, was performed. Additionally, this review summarizes the differences among the different source apportionment techniques, with focus on source-oriented models, highlighting their purpose and their advantages and disadvantages. Results shows that the number of studies using source apportionment source-oriented models has been increasing across the years, with 59% using tagged species methods, 28% brute force methods, and 13% other methods. This source-oriented models have been mostly applied for PM2.5, to assess the causes of air pollution levels.

Health Risk Assessment via AirQ+ Modelling in Faisalabad and Adaptive Management Framework

“…The European Air Quality Directive emphasizes the importance of source apportionment in assessing air pollution origins and recommends its application in estimating source contributions to particulate matter (PM). The Forum for Air quality Modelling (FAIRMODE), a joint initiative of the European Environment Agency (EEA) and the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), has developed a European guide to provide an overview and recommendations for applying air quality models to estimate source contributions to PM and guide the selection of effective mitigation strategies and measures for air quality plans [10]. New tools are being developed while several extensive studies have been conducted around the globe [7].…”