Site representativeness of urban air monitoring stations

This paper describes a statistic to quantify spatial representativeness for the air measurements of an urban fixed-site ambient air monitoring station. The application of such a statistic of representativeness has also been successfully demonstrated by two data sets collected at the Gu-Ting monitoring station in Taipei. By measuring NO2 at 22 sites simultaneously around the Gu-Ting station, the statistic has characterized different degrees of spatial representativeness for nitrogen dioxide (NO2) at various areas and microenvironments surrounding this fixed-site monitoring station. By measuring ambient air concentrations at six sites sequentially around the Gu-Ting station, the statistic has also characterized different degrees of representativeness for particulates less than 10 mu m in size-(PM(10)), carbon monoxide (GO), sulfur dioxide (SO2), ozone (O-3), NO2, nitrogen oxides (NOx), nitrogen monoxide (NO), total hydrocarbons (THC), and nonmethane hydrocarbons (NMHC)-at an open area surrounding this fixed-site monitoring station. This statistical method identifies the Gu-Ting station is well representative of outdoor concentrations of all nine air pollutants for a period of three weeks at the areas within a 700 m radius around this station. The indoor NO2 concentrations, however, are not represented by the measurements at the fixed-site monitoring station.