AN APPLICATION OF A REGIONAL AIR-POLLUTION ESTIMATION MODEL OVER ISTANBUL URBAN AREA

This paper establishes an estimation method for air pollutant concentr ations at discrete points by making use of the amounts recorded at air pollution measurement sites within urban and in suburban areas of the city. The basis of the methodology is to establish a relationship thr ough the cumulative semivariogram technique between the distance ratio s and the spatial dependence structure of the pollutant concentrations . The estimation is achieved by considering areal weighted average pro cedure where the weights are functions of the distances between the es timation site and measurement stations. The proposed method is impleme nted for the sulfur dioxide and suspended particulate matter and month ly concentrations being measured at 16 different sites scattered all o ver the Istanbul urban area. The reliability of the method proposed is checked through the cross-validation procedure. The overall regional relative error between the observed and estimated concentrations remai n less than 10%. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.