title: The influence of street layouts and viaduct settings on daily carbon monoxide exposure and intake fraction in idealized urban canyons.
abstract: Environmental concerns have been raised on the adverse health effects of vehicle emissions in micro-scale traffic-crowded street canyons, especially for pedestrians and residents living in near-road buildings. Viaduct design is sometimes used to improve transportation efficiency but possibly affects urban airflow and the resultant exposure risk, which have been rarely investigated so far. The personal intake fraction (P_IF) is defined as the average fraction of total emissions that is inhaled by each person of a population (1 ppm = 1 × 10-6), and the daily carbon monoxide (CO) pollutant exposure (Et) is estimated by multiplying the average concentration of a specific micro-environment within one day. As a novelty, by considering time activity patterns and breathing rates in various micro-environments for three age groups, this paper introduces IF and Etinto computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulation to quantify the impacts of street layouts (street width/building height W/H = 1, 1.5, 2), source location, viaduct settings and noise barriers on the source-exposure correlation when realistic CO sources are defined. Narrower streets experience larger P_IF (1.51-5.21 ppm) and CO exposure, and leeward-side buildings always attain higher vehicular pollutant exposure than windward-side. Cases with a viaduct experience smaller P_IF (3.25-1.46 ppm) than cases without a viaduct (P_IF = 5.21-2.23 ppm) if the single ground-level CO source is elevated onto the viaduct. With two CO sources (both ground-level and viaduct-level), daily CO exposure rises 2.80-3.33 times but P_IF only change slightly. Noise barriers above a viaduct raise concentration between barriers, but slightly reduce vehicular exposure in near-road buildings. Because people spend most of their time indoors, vehicular pollutant exposure within near-road buildings can be 6-9 times that at pedestrian level. Although further studies are still required to provide practical guidelines, this paper provides effective methodologies to quantify the impacts of street/viaduct configurations on human exposure for urban design purpose.
authors.affiliation: School of Atmospheric Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, PR China.
authors.forename: Jian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hang
authors.affiliation: School of the Built Environment, University of Reading, Reading, UK. Electronic address: z.luo@reading.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Zhiwen
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Luo
authors.affiliation: School of Atmospheric Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, PR China.
authors.forename: Xuemei
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: School of Atmospheric Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, PR China.
authors.forename: Lejian
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: He
authors.affiliation: School of Atmospheric Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, PR China.
authors.forename: Baomin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: School of Atmospheric Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, PR China.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zhu
mesh_terms: D000393:Air Pollutants / Q000032:analysis*; D002248:Carbon Monoxide / Q000032:analysis*; D004777:Environment; D004781:Environmental Exposure / Q000032:analysis / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D004784:Environmental Monitoring; D006801:Humans; D009622:Noise; D014186:Transportation; D001335:Vehicle Emissions / Q000032:analysis; D014919:Wind
chemical_list: D000393:Air Pollutants; D001335:Vehicle Emissions; D002248:Carbon Monoxide
keywords: Daily pollutant exposure; Intake fraction; Noise barrier; Street canyon; Viaduct