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Air Quality Risk Index (AQRI) and its application for a megacity
Ahmadi, A.; Abbaspour, M.; Arjmandi, R. & Abedi, Z.
Abstract
Urban air quality is a major concern throughout
the world. The concentration of human activities in a
relatively small area puts enormous pressure on urban
systems and has led to numerous environmental problems
which have created major problems for urban air quality
management. The complex nature of air pollution, especially
with respect to health impacts in urban areas, has
prompted attempts to define the so-called indicators that
condense and simplify the available monitoring data to
make them suitable for public reporting and decision
makers. Several concepts and indicators exist to measure
and rank urban areas in terms of their infrastructural,
socioeconomic and environment-related parameters. In
past four decades different indices have been introduced,
such as Pollutant Standards Index, Air Quality Index
(AQI), Air Quality Health Index and Aggregate Risk Index,
but none of them have considered importance of the integrated
health, environment and safety factors relevant to
the extended risk factors involved, such as diverse economic
losses and negative socioeconomic aspects. Therefore
an integrated AQI, so-called, Air Quality Risk Index
which considers environmental conditions, and economic
losses involved were applied for the city of Tehran as a
megacity. The results indicated that this index can be
applied to define the actual condition(s) of urban air quality
and to achieve sustainability and resiliency.
Keywords
Air pollution; Air Quality Index; Air Quality Health Index; Air Quality Risk Index; Health, safety and environment
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