DESIGN OF THE AIR QUALITY MONITORING NETWORK FOR BUCHAREST CITY

This paper summarizes the methodology and concept used to design the air quality monitoring network in Bucharest City carried out during 2002 and 2003 in the framework of the EU PHARE Project "Local Pilot Investment Project in the EPA (Environment Protection Agency)Bucharest for Air Quality Monitoring". Although, similar methodologies were widely used in the majority of European metropolitan areas with the purpose of improving the air quality networks, some original approaches have been applied for the Bucharest city The procedures underlying this methodology are principally based on combining the dispersion modelling activities with the results of two measurement campaigns using passive sampling technique Previously, the preliminary assessment of the Air Quality (AQ) in the city of Bucharest mainly performed by modelling indicated in 2002 possible positions of the future AQ monitoring sites The results of the measurement campaigns and the additional modelling activities during the project, largely confirmed the appropriateness of the initial proposal for the 6 fixed monitoring AQ stations The good response of model compared to measurements encourages the development of modelling activities in the future for improving the actual proposed air quality network configuration