AIR-QUALITY MONITORING FOR MULTIPLE POLLUTANTS - OPTIMIZATION OF A NETWORK AROUND A HYPOTHETICAL POTASH PLANT AND 2 THERMAL POWER-STATIONS IN OPEN COUNTRYSIDE

A method is presented for the design of multi-pollutant air quality mo nitoring networks (AQMN). This technique leads to an optimal network, i.e. a network providing a maximum of information with a minimum of me asurement devices. The spatial correlation analysis technique is used to compare the information given by the potential sites that may form the network. The concept of potential of violation is defined to take into account the number of times that the maximum emission values tole rated by law are exceeded. Both objectives are weighted automatically through an adjustable parameter, b, for which an estimation procedure has been developed in this study, depending on the purpose of the netw ork. Several methods are described, allowing simultaneous consideratio n of different pollutants. As an illustration of these methods, a numb er of air quality monitoring networks is designed to perform an analys is of the environmental impact due to a hypothetical potash processing plant and two thermal power stations.