The requirements of the framework Directive on air quality assessment and management introduce real practical problems for the meteorological community. Some of the meteorological variables needed in urban air pollution assessments are not routinely measured and in normal circumstances the number of meteorological stations in urban areas is limited to a few sites often just at airports. The Eur...

A web-based screening tool has been developed to assist urban planners and air quality management officials in assessing the potential of urban heat island mitigation strategies to affect the urban climate, ozone air quality, and energy consumption within their cities. The user of the screening tool can select from any of over 200 US cities for which to conduct the analysis. The mitigation stra...

Soil quality is critical to the management of urban green space, in particular, along traffic corridors where traffic-related air pollution is significant. Soil quality can be evaluated by soil enzyme activities, which show quick responses to both natural and anthropogenic disturbances. In this study, we investigated three soil enzyme activities (i.e., dehydrogenase, catalase and urease) along ...

Urban air pollution levels are associated with increased mortality and cardiorespiratory morbidity. These health effects occur even at exposure levels below those stipulated in current air-quality guidelines, and it is unclear whether a safe threshold exists. Air pollution in Australia and New Zealand comes primarily from motor vehicle emissions, electricity generation from fossil fuels, heavy ...

This study presents a method used for predicting the air temperature distribution in an urbanized area from the surface temperature of trees. A strong trend of urbanization can be observed whole over the world (United Nations Centre for Human Settlement, 1996). It is well known and documented that urbanization can have significant effects on local weather and climate (Landsberg, 1981). One of t...

How bad is living in a city for asthma? Several investigations have indicated that individuals living in cities have a higher risk of suffering from asthma and allergies compared to those living in the countryside, this being due to several factors. Besides the fact that individual susceptibility varies between urban and rural settings, there are environmental factors that are typical of living...

Traffic congestion is one of the foremost problems confronted by the urban and suburban tenants of today. Traffic congestion increases vehicle emissions and degrades air quality. Urban planners and policy makers have consequently been always investigating choices to alleviate traffic congestion and to enhance air quality. Teleworking is one option that has received significant consideration and...

Air pollution has become one of the key environmental concerns in the urban sustainable development. It is important to evaluate the impact of air pollution on socioeconomic development since it is the prerequisite to enforce an effective prevention policy of air pollution. In this paper, we model the impact of air pollution on the urban economic development as a Multiple Criteria Decision Maki...

Bor and the surroundings (Eastern Serbia) have a poor air quality, due to emissions from the miningmetallurgical complex for copper production. Considering the processing and smelting of sulphide ores, one of the dominant air pollutant is SO2, which causes acidification of waters and soil, affecting vegetation. Biomonitoring of air pollution was conducted in order to examine the effect of the i...