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3.
Design monitoring programmes, siting and planning
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To design an air quality monitoring programme it will be necessary to evaluate the indicators to be measured, number of measurement stations, the location of sites and the type instruments based upon available information on:
- Monitoring objectives,
- The typical air pollution problem of the area,
- The type of area (urban, industrial, background),
- Emission sources,
- Meteorological and climatological conditions,
- Topography and prevailing winds,
- Existing data.
A monitoring station gives air quality data which are representative for a certain area around the station. The area in which the concentration does not differ from the concentration measured at the station by more than a specified amount can be called the area of representativeness of the station.
The area of representativeness varies with type of station: For a traffic hot-spot station it may be in the order of less than 10 metres, while for a regional station it might have a radius of tens of kilometres. It depends strongly on the concentration difference allowed in the definition, and on the immediate environment of the stations, its morphology and sources. This immediate environment will be described for each site, as part of the meta-information.
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Representativeness
and site classification |
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An evaluation of the representative area is of considerable value when using monitoring data from a network, such as the European
EUROAIRNET, to estimate exposure. Thus the determination of station class should be accompanied by an evaluation of the station's area of
representativeness.
For each monitoring site the surrounding area, local sources and possible impacts will be described in the siting reports. The site will be characterised according to standard reporting procedures.
As part of the European EUROAIRNET descriptions the measurement stations are classified according to the following criteria:
- Type of station (traffic, industrial, background)
- Type of zone (urban, suburban, rural)
Characterization of zone (residential, commercial, industrial, agricultural, natural and combinations of these, e.g.
RES/COM, COM/IND, IND/RES, RES/COM/IND, AGR/NAT).
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