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The management of atmospheric polluting reject is based on the ability to measure this pollution. This paper deals with the case where no local sensor can be used, inducing the use of video to detect and evaluate the atmospheric pollution coming from large industrial facilities. This paper presents a comparison of different classifiers used in a monitoring system of polluting smokes detected by cameras. The data used in this work are stemming from a system of video analysis and signal processing. The database also includes the pollution level of plumes of smoke defined by an expert. Several Machine Learning techniques are tested and compared. The experimental results are obtained from a real world database of polluting rejects. The parameters of each type of classifier are split in three categories: learned parameters, parameters determined by a first step of the experimentation, and parameters set by the programmer. The comparison of the results of the best classifier of each type indicates that all of them provide good results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

TAPM consists of an inline, nested, prognostic meteorological and air pollution model that solves the fundamental equations of atmospheric flow, thermodynamics, moisture conservation, turbulence and dispersion, wherever practical, for horizontal modelling domains of up to 1,500 km in size and horizontal grid spacing typically from 30 km down to 300 m for meteorology, with optionally even finer grid spacing for air pollution. The meteorological component of the model is nested within large-scale analyses/forecasts, which drive the model at the boundaries of the outer grid. The use of integrated modules for plume rise, Lagrangian particle, building wake, and Eulerian grids with condensed chemistry schemes, allows industrial and urban air pollution to be modelled accurately at fine resolution for long simulations. TAPM has been verified for a number of Australian and international datasets, and results from these studies have shown good model performance for both meteorology and air pollution predictions, particularly for the study of annual extreme (high) concentrations important for environmental impact assessments. In this paper, the development and verification of TAPM V3 will be summarised, along with current development and verification studies that will eventually be available in a future version of TAPM. These new developments will include options for more complete land surface schemes and global datasets for soil and vegetative canopies, enhanced turbulence schemes, and the addition of several comprehensive meteorology and turbulence and air pollution verification datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We address environmental information multimodal communication by making use of the air quality (AQ) paradigm. AQ information dissemination methods and tools can make use of various telecommunication channels for pull and push service provision. In addition, location based services are also emerging in the field of personalised, quality of life services. Moreover, communication per se is not based solely on written or oral language forms, but makes use of graphical, symbolical and in more general terms multimedia language communication schemes, via properly designed multimedia environmental information content, streamed via multimodal communication channels. Human perception and communication of such information is based on design schemes that may convey the message in an understandable and effective way. The present paper suggests a design approach to multimodal communication of AQ information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a brief review of existing levels and trends in the air pollution in selected East-European countries. Its significant part is based on the data downloaded from the net but some characteristics for Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine are original estimates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper describes current and historic air quality in the Republic of Moldova, air quality monitoring, sources of air pollution, measurement programmes, parameters, data management and reporting. The report presents an analysis of national air quality based on 2006 data, and examines the trends and tendencies in the period from 2002 to 2006. However, is it necessary to mention that the results obtained from various air quality monitoring activities are frequently not comparable or complementary. There is no integration between different data sets. The current air quality networks are generally unable to link air pollution levels with emission patters and thereby identify activities that violate emission norms or air quality standards. Air pollution modeling may be seen as a method for providing information on air quality on the basis of what we know about emissions, and atmospheric processes that lead to pollutant dispersion, transport, chemical conversion and removal from the atmosphere by deposition. Models have to become a primary tool for analysis in most air quality assessments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Character Of Soil Pollution At Different Distances From An Opencast Mine And Agglomeration Plant Has Been Studied. The Toxic Ingredients Of The Polluted Soil Have Affected Quite Significantly The Metabolism Of Tested Red Radish Plantlets. The Goal Of This Paper Was To Study The Influence And Accumulation Of Toxic Components In Soils Collected Near Different Stationary Sources Of Emissions In The Dnepropetrovsk Region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A definition of the term "sidestream smoke" is presented. It refers to the material which diffuses through the paper plus the material released into the air from the burning tip of the cigarette.

Attribute Selection (AS) is generally applied as a data pre-processing step to sufficiently reduce the number of attributes in a dataset. This study uses six different data mining AS methods to identify a few key driving climate and air pollution attributes from small attribute sets (16 attributes) to increase knowledge about the underlying structures of acute respiratory hospital admission counts, because understanding key factors in environmental science data helps constructing a cost effective data collection and management process by focusing on collecting and investigating more representative and important variables. The performance of the selected attribute set was tested with Ant-Miner and C4.5 classifiers to examine the ability to prediction the admission count. Removal of attributes was successful over all AS methods, especially TNSU (a newly developed AS method, Tree Node Selection for unpruned), which achieved best in removing attributes and some improving the classification accuracy for Ant-Miner and C4.5. However, the overall prediction accuracy improvements are small, suggesting that AS selects attribute sets sufficiently enough to maintain the accuracy for Ant-Miner and C4.5. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolution in air pollution levels and spatial distribution in the 21st century is investigated with respect to climate change. The coupled atmosphere- ocean general circulation model ECHAM4-OPYC3 is providing meteorological fields for two time slices (1990s and 2090s) to the chemical long-range transport model DEHM-REGINA. The dominating impacts from climate change on a large number of the chemical species are related to the predicted temperature increase since most of the reaction rates of the involved species are temperature dependent. The ECHAM4-OPYC3 projects a global mean temperature increase of 3 K with local maxima up to 11 K in the Arctic. As a consequence of this temperature increase, the temperature dependent biogenic emission of isoprene is predicted to increase significantly over land by the DEHM-REGINA model simulation. This leads to an increase in the ozone production and together with an increase in water vapour to an increase in the number of free OH radicals. Furthermore an increase in the number of radicals contributes to a significant change in the typical life times of many species, since hydroxyl radicals are participating in a large number of chemical reactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Air pollution in Jakarta in dry season (6–19 August 2004) was numerically investigated by using CTM. Obtained results showed: Pollutants rich air mass, which was transported from Jakarta to Java Sea by land breeze, was found as source of ozone rich air mass brought into Jakarta by sea breeze. Shallow sea breeze with 400 m in depth and thermal internal boundary layers caped by strong stable layer resulted in a characteristic ozone concentration profile with low at ground and high at 300 m. Shallow sea breeze layer was due to synoptic easterly and southeasterly in this season. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of physics parameterization on meteorological and chemical fields were examined over the Kanto region of Japan using an air quality (AQ) model, which consists of two chemistry transport models: the global model CHASER and the regional model WRF/Chem. For hindcast experiments without a chemical module for June-July in 2005 and 2006, two non-local planetary boundary layer (PBL) schemes (Yonsei University YSU and NCEP GFS) showed a deeper PBL height and a stronger sea-breeze related with warmer surface temperature than for the observation and the local PBL scheme (Mellor-Yamada level 2.5). Two experiments with a chemical module for July–August in 2005 clarified that NCEP GFS scheme transported O3 plumes to higher altitudes above 2 km and also produced a higher concentration near the surface than for Mellor-Yamada scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of gaseous CO2 and SO2 attains additional importance when examining the processes of alteration and decay in historical buildings made of calcareous stones. We selected the Al-Ghuri complex (Cairo, Egypt) for the study of black crust formation on stone building surfaces due to the presence of carbonaceous materials and sulfatation via CaCO3 conversion to gypsum (CaSO4.2H2O). Under dry deposition, the breakdown of calcareous stones depends on the relative humidity and the presence of catalysts, e.g., O3 and oxides of Cu, Fe and Mn. Depth profile analyses indicated the presence of sulfates to depths of 100 to 1200µm below the stone surface. Sulfatation was usually formed on the stone surface, and sometimes penetrated the outer surface through micro-fractures and pores. NaCl crystals (in cubic form) were precipitated at stone surfaces and pores due to the presence of sewage water via capillary action. Polyhalite [K2Ca2Mg(SO4)4.2H2O] and epsomite (MgSO4.7H2O) were developed as minute crystals up to 121µm. This study reveals the influence of sulfatation and salt formation and microrganismal activities on accelerating the rate of monumental stone degradation. Such processes involve reaction of stone with the pollutants, transformation of CaCO3 to CaSO4.2H2O, and precipitation of NaCl, which under appropriate conditions crystallizes within pores and micro-cavities of stones. One possible consequence is the rupture and spilling of the upper surface of the stone due to crystal pressure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]