Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2017, 14(9), 1008; doi:10.3390/ijerph14091008
Fine-Scale Spatial Variability of Pedestrian-Level Particulate Matters in Compact Urban Commercial Districts in Hong Kong
1
School of Architecture, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, NT, Hong Kong, China
2
Institute of Environment, Energy and Sustainability (IEES), The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, NT, Hong Kong, China
3
Institute of Future Cities (IOFC), The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, NT, Hong Kong, China
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editors: Gabriel Filippelli and Mark Patrick Taylor
Received: 19 July 2017 / Revised: 26 August 2017 / Accepted: 1 September 2017 / Published: 3 September 2017
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban Geochemistry and Human Health)
Abstract
Particulate matters (PM) at the pedestrian level significantly raises the health impacts in the compact urban environment of Hong Kong. A detailed investigation of the fine-scale spatial variation of pedestrian-level PM is necessary to assess the health risk to pedestrians in the outdoor environment. However, the collection of PM data is difficult in the compact urban environment of Hong Kong due to the limited amount of roadside monitoring stations and the complicated urban context. In this study, we measured the fine-scale spatial variability of the PM in three of the most representative commercial districts of Hong Kong using a backpack outdoor environmental measuring unit. Based on the measurement data, 13 types of geospatial interpolation methods were examined for the spatial mapping of PM2.5 and PM10 with a group of building geometrical covariates. Geostatistical modelling was adopted as the basis of spatial interpolation of the PM. The results show that the original cokriging with the exponential kernel function provides the best performance in the PM mapping. Using the fine-scale building geometrical features as covariates slightly improves the interpolation performance. The study results also imply that the fine-scale, localized pollution emission sources heavily influence pedestrian exposure to PM. View Full-TextKeywords:
particulate matters; fine-scale spatial variability; pedestrian level; geospatial interpolation
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Shi, Y.; Ng, E. Fine-Scale Spatial Variability of Pedestrian-Level Particulate Matters in Compact Urban Commercial Districts in Hong Kong. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2017, 14, 1008.
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