APPLICATION OF DIFFERENT DISPERSION MODELS TO A SITE NEAR THE BELGIAN-DUTCH BORDER

Many countries in Europe use dispersion models for regulatory purposes that differ in many aspects. In practical situations near borders bet ween countries this may lead to the calculation of very different impa cts of the same source configuration. We applied three models to the s ame source in the Dutch province of Zeeland Flanders, near the Belgian -Dutch border. The Belgian model IFDM and the Dutch National Model (DN M) are used, which are both regulatory model's. The DNM is currently c riticized because of its obsolete descriptions of meteorology; therefo re, the advanced Dutch model STACKS was used as well. The source confi guration was taken from an existing environmental impact study, which was necessary to obtain the relevant emission licences. Some validatio n aspects of the models are discussed, such as comparison with the Kin caid data, both for the SO2 and the SF6 concentrations. As expected, t he DNM produces results different from the other two models in terms o f yearly averaged concentrations and 98-percentiles. In this paper the se differences are discussed, taking into account the fundamentals of the models, which reflect the different qualities of the models and th e influence of practical implications, such as using ready-for-use (ro utine) meteorological datasets as opposed to specific meteorological i nput datasets especially built for this application