The Urban Atmospheric Dispersion Model “Daumod”: Development, Validation And Applications To Buenos Aires City

Abstract

This paper presents relevant aspects of the urban atmospheric dispersion model
DAUMOD: 1) a description of the main assumptions considered in its development, 2)
several results of the evaluation of its performance; 3) a discussion on model results
sensitivity to the roughness length value, atmospheric stability and to different
parameterisation of the vertical extension of the plume of contaminants and 4) the application
of DAUMOD model to estimate air pollutant concentrations in Buenos Aires City. DAUMOD
model estimates background concentrations of pollutants emitted from multiple area sources
located in an urban area. Statistical evaluations of its results for five cities show a good
agreement between estimations and observed values. The applications to Buenos Aires City
include the estimation of background concentration distributions of CO and NOx in the city
using the DAUMOD model to area source emissions and the ISCST3 model to point source
emissions. Estimated concentration patterns show a large spatial variability mainly related to
the distribution of emissions. We use model estimations of hourly concentrations to obtain an
evaluation of the possible population exposure to NO2 in the city. Considering model
estimations we present the application of an objective method to select the minimum number
of monitoring sites to control CO, NOx and PM10 concentration levels in the city.