The Particle Deposition Flux Monitoring and Analysis Approach of the SUPREME Project

SUPREME, a very articulated project still in progress financed by the Italian Universities andResearch Ministry, concerns an integrated decision support system finalized to catastrophic events forecastand to prevent and mitigate flooding and air pollution effects on monumental stones. This paper focuses onthe aerosols deposition tool. The new box model AERBOX simulates the whole life cycle of aerosols andthe consequent urban pollution impact due to the flux of particulate matter deposition. Applied on themonumental area of Florence basin, AERBOX models the industrial and mobile sources of the 50 km x 50km surrounding area induced pollution, and estimates the aerosol deposition on a user chosen grid.AERBOX takes into account all the relevant chemical and physical processes involved. Concentration of 52species of gaseous pollutants and deposition rates of 10 of them and 14 species of particulate pollutants arecalculated on hourly basis. The time and chemical profiles of the emissions have been adapted to theFlorentine region from the reference profiles given by both California Air Resource Board and EPA. Theinput data have been interfaced to the model with a user-friendly graphical pre-processor. AERBOXcalculates concentrations and deposition fluxes in typical summer and winter seasons and it estimates theeffects of cumulated deposition on the monuments. Coupled with a post processor visualisation tool, thissystem can be seen as an useful tool in urban air pollution management and monitoring. Both the preprocessorand the post-processor have been developed by AVS/Express.