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Methodological improvements on interpolating European air quality maps
ETC/ACC Technical Paper 2009/16

Released: 2010/09/30: See the report

Abstract
In the past few years the ETC/ACC tested and implemented a methodology for spatially mapping the air quality with consecutive exposure assessments on a European scale. Now, European maps health impact assessments for specifically PM10 and ozone are routinely prepared using a standardised spatial mapping and assessment methodology. However, observed is that reduced uncertainties could be reached when improving different methodological aspects. This paper focusses on three categories that have the best potential for uncertainty reductions: alternative data sources or data treatment (log-normal concentration transposition, altitude transformation, introduction of land cover data); rural versus urban area treatment in merging procedures leading to one combined European concentration map; changing grid resolutions at the three consietuve steps of the methodology to estimate European population exposures: interpolation, map merging and health exposure estimates. For each category one or more options for improvements are addressed and tested on their relevancy for implementation into the default standard mapping procedure.

The paper comes to the following main recommendations: keep using the current interpolation method with the separate rural, urban and joint rural/urban maps on just the 10x10 km grid resolution; implement log-normal transposition of PM10 concentrations (not for ozone); when Corine Land Cover covers the European mapping domain, reconsider for PM10 introducing certain land use classes; apply refined merging criteria related to the rural and urban area classification; implement merging on a finer resolution (1x1 km instead of 10x10 km grids) as most important improvement; never aggregate concentration maps for health exposure estimates.

Prepared by: ETC/ACC members Jan Horálek¹, Peter de Smet², Frank de Leeuw², Markéta Coňková¹, Bruce Denby³, Pavel Kurfürst^{1
1Czech Hydrometeorological Institute (CHMI), Praha, Czech Republic
2Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL), Bilthoven, Netherlands
3Norwegian Institute of Air Research (NILU), Oslo, Norway}

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