Average areal sulphur dioxide concentration estimation by percentage weighting polygon method in Erzurum urban centre, Turkey

The percentage weighting polygon (PWP) method is proposed as an alternative to the classical arithmetic average (AA) method for calculating the average areal concentration (AAC) over an urban centre. The basis of the method is to divide the study area into a set of sub-areas by considering three adjacent air pollutants concentration percentages at a time. This method is more reliable and flexible than the AA method where the subareas remain the same independent of the measured air pollutants concentrations. In this paper, the PWP method is applied to the urban centre of Erzurum in Turkey for the first time, at six air quality monitoring stations. In the PWP method, higher air pollutant concentration values are represented with the smaller sub-areas than in the case of the AA method. It is observed that the PWP method yields a 16.5% smaller AAC value than the classical AA method. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.