title: Modelling short term individual exposure from airborne hazardous releases in urban environments.
abstract: A key issue, in order to be able to cope with deliberate or accidental atmospheric releases of hazardous substances, is the ability to reliably predict the individual exposure downstream the source. In many situations, the release time and/or the health relevant exposure time is short compared to mean concentration time scales. In such a case, a significant scatter of exposure levels is expected due to the stochastic nature of turbulence. The problem becomes even more complex when dispersion occurs over urban environments. The present work is the first attempt to approximate on generic terms, the statistical behavior of the abovementioned variability with a beta distribution probability density function (beta-pdf) which has proved to be quite successful. The important issue of the extreme concentration value in beta-pdf seems to be properly addressed by the [5] correlation in which global values of its associated constants are proposed. Two substantially different datasets, the wind tunnel Michelstadt experiment and the field Mock Urban Setting Trial (MUST) experiment gave clear support to the proposed novel theory and its hypotheses. In addition, the present work can be considered as basis for further investigation and model refinements.
authors.affiliation: University of Western Macedonia, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Sialvera & Bakola Str., 50100, Kozani, Greece. Electronic address: bartzis@uowm.gr.
authors.forename: J G
authors.initials: JG
authors.lastname: Bartzis
authors.affiliation: Environmental Research Laboratory, INRASTES, NCSR Demokritos, Patriarchou Grigoriou & Neapoleos Str., 15310, Aghia Paraskevi, Greece.
authors.forename: G C
authors.initials: GC
authors.lastname: Efthimiou
authors.affiliation: Environmental Research Laboratory, INRASTES, NCSR Demokritos, Patriarchou Grigoriou & Neapoleos Str., 15310, Aghia Paraskevi, Greece.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Andronopoulos
mesh_terms: D000393:Air Pollutants / Q000032:analysis*; D002947:Cities; D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008962:Models, Theoretical
chemical_list: D000393:Air Pollutants
keywords: Beta distribution; Concentration fluctuations; Concentration statistics; Extreme concentrations; Individual exposure