Atmospheric remote sensing offers a unique opportunity to compute indirect estimates of air quality, which are critically important for the management and surveillance of air quality in megacities of developing countries, particularly in India and China, which have experienced elevated concentration of air pollution but lack adequate spatial-temporal coverage of air pollution monitoring. This a...

The OSIRIS project addresses the disaster management workflow in the phases of risk monitoring and crisis management. Risk monitoring allows the continuous observation of endangered areas combined with sensor deployment strategies. The crisis management focuses on particular events and the support by sensor networks. Four complementary live demonstrations will validate the OSIRIS approach. Thes...

BACKGROUND The burning of biomass fuels results in exposure to high levels of indoor air pollution, with consequent health effects. Possible interventions to reduce the exposure include changing cooking practices and introduction of smoke-free stoves supported by health education. Social, cultural and financial constraints are major challenges to implementation and success of interventions. The...

Many frequent and severe air pollution incidents have emerged across the vast parts of China recently. The identification of factors and mapping social vulnerability has become extremely necessary for environmental management and sustainable development. However, studies associating social vulnerability with air pollution remain sparse. With reference to research achievements of social vulnerab...

There is rapidly growing interest in the use of market-based (MB) instruments in environmental policy. The papers in this session discuss three relatively new areas for such policies: groundwater contamination, nonpoint source surface-water pollution and carbon sequestration. The papers point out the potential for MB policies in these areas, but significant challenges remain. This comment highl...

The 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act required the EPA to institute new pollution control technology requirements for industrial sources of air pollution. In part because agreement could not be reached on the best way for the EPA to determine whether any significant risks to human health will remain after the technology controls are in place, the amendments also created a Commission on Risk ...

The balance between thermal comfort and air quality in healthcare facilities to optimize the Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) is the main aim of this paper. The present paper will present this balance from the viewpoint of the air conditioning design. It was found that the design of the HVAC airside systems plays an important role for achieving the optimum air quality beside the optimum comfort level. ...

The major wheat production region of China the North China Plain (NCP) is seriously affected by air pollution. In this study, yield of winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) was analyzed with respect to the potential impact of air pollution index under conditions of optimal crop management in the NCP from 2001 to 2012. Results showed that air pollution was especially serious at the early phase of ...

The prime aim of this research is to support decision making, e.g., air quality impact analysis, human health assessment, through spatially modelling traffic-induced air pollution dispersion in urban areas at street level. Based on the information needed in decision making, a framework for a street level air quality decision support system is established, which is composed of basically three pa...

Air pollution issues in South Africa were only brought to public attention in the late 1980’s when concern was expressed over the high emissions from industries on the Highveld (east of Johannesburg). Air pollution issues have since been raised in other parts of the country such as Durban and Cape Town. Although the research and monitoring of air pollution has been largely fragmented and uncoor...