Special Issue "Urban Air Pollution: Monitoring, Impact, and Mitigation"

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Pollution Prevention, Mitigation and Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 November 2021.

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Fabio Famoso
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture, University of Catania, Viale Andrea Doria 6, 95025 Catania, Italy
Interests: air pollutant dispersion modeling; GIS-based models for advanced energy systems; simulation and optimization of renewable energy systems; environmental impact
Prof. Jeffrey Wilson
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Geography, Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis, Indianapolis, United States
Interests: environmental remote sensing; geographic information science

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues, 

Urban air pollution is a complex problem that has generated interdisciplinary research involving multiple fields, including atmospheric sciences, environmental physics, chemistry, earth science, data science, policy research, as well as medicine and public health fields. Air pollution was a seemingly intractable problem for most of the developed world in the previous century and primarily caused by the extensive use of fossil fuel-based energy systems. Research on monitoring, impacts, and mitigation of air pollution has grown considerably during the last few decades. However, scientists and policy makers continue to face several daunting problems, including developing effective methods to assess the long-term effects on human health and ecosystems. Currently, for example, the global scientific community is investigating the phenomenon of indoor/outdoor aerosol diffusion in the context of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. For these reasons, it seems of crucial importance to pay attention to innovative approaches to air quality assessment. This Special Issue invites researchers to contribute relevant manuscripts focusing on the following topics: 

  • Innovative technologies to identify air pollutants sources;
  • Evaluation studies of both indoor and outdoor air quality;
  • High spatial and temporal resolution models of pollutants diffusion;
  • Air pollutant emissions sources: combustion emissions, stationary emission sources, hazardous wastes, etc.;
  • Air pollution control and monitoring technologies;
  • Source sampling and emission measurements innovative methods;
  • Air pollution modeling applications;
  • Air pollution impacts to humans, ecosystems, and materials. 

Kind Regards 

Dr. Fabio Famoso
Prof. Jeffrey Wilson
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • indoor/outdoor air quality
  • air pollution reduction
  • air pollution dispersion modeling
  • air quality evaluation
  • environmental impact

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

Article
Substantial Decreases in U.S. Cities’ Ground-Based NO2 Concentrations during COVID-19 from Reduced Transportation
Sustainability 2021, 13(16), 9030; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13169030 - 12 Aug 2021
Viewed by 362
Abstract
A substantial reduction in global transport and industrial processes stemming from the novel SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and subsequent pandemic resulted in sharp declines in emissions, including for NO2. This has implications for human health, given the role that this gas plays in [...] Read more.
A substantial reduction in global transport and industrial processes stemming from the novel SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and subsequent pandemic resulted in sharp declines in emissions, including for NO2. This has implications for human health, given the role that this gas plays in pulmonary disease and the findings that past exposure to air pollutants has been linked to the most adverse outcomes from COVID-19 disease, likely via various co-morbidities. To explore how much COVID-19 shutdown policies impacted urban air quality, we examined ground-based NO2 sensor data from 11 U.S. cities from a two-month window (March–April) during shutdown in 2020, controlling for natural seasonal variability by using average changes in NO2 over the previous five years for these cities. Levels of NO2 and VMT reduction in March and April compared to January 2020 ranged between 11–65% and 11–89%, consistent with a sharp drop in vehicular traffic from shutdown-related travel restrictions. To explore this link closely, we gathered detailed traffic count data in one city—Indianapolis, Indiana—and found a strong correlation (0.90) between traffic counts/classification and vehicle miles travelled, a moderate correlation (0.54) between NO2 and traffic related data, and an average reduction of 1.11 ppb of NO2 linked to vehicular data. This finding indicates that targeted reduction in pollutants like NO2 can be made by manipulating traffic patterns, thus potentially leading to more population-level health resilience in the future. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban Air Pollution: Monitoring, Impact, and Mitigation)
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Article
Dynamic Complex Network Analysis of PM2.5 Concentrations in the UK, Using Hierarchical Directed Graphs (V1.0.0)
Sustainability 2021, 13(4), 2201; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13042201 - 18 Feb 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 621
Abstract
The risk of a broad range of respiratory and heart diseases can be increased by widespread exposure to fine atmospheric particles on account of their capability to have a deep penetration into the blood streams and lung. Globally, studies conducted epidemiologically in Europe [...] Read more.
The risk of a broad range of respiratory and heart diseases can be increased by widespread exposure to fine atmospheric particles on account of their capability to have a deep penetration into the blood streams and lung. Globally, studies conducted epidemiologically in Europe and elsewhere provided the evidence base indicating the major role of PM2.5 leading to more than four million deaths annually. Conventional approaches to simulate atmospheric transportation of particles having high dimensionality from both transport and chemical reaction process make exhaustive causal inference difficult. Alternative model reduction methods were adopted, specifically a data-driven directed graph representation, to deduce causal directionality and spatial embeddedness. An undirected correlation and a directed Granger causality network were established through utilizing PM2.5 concentrations in 14 United Kingdom cities for one year. To demonstrate both reduced-order cases, the United Kingdom was split up into two southern and northern connected city communities, with notable spatial embedding in summer and spring. It continued to reach stability to disturbances through the network trophic coherence parameter and by which winter was construed as the most considerable vulnerability. Thanks to our novel graph reduced modeling, we could represent high-dimensional knowledge in a causal inference and stability framework. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban Air Pollution: Monitoring, Impact, and Mitigation)
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Article
Health-Based Approach to Determine Alert and Information Thresholds for Particulate Matter Air Pollution
Sustainability 2021, 13(3), 1345; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13031345 - 28 Jan 2021
Viewed by 445
Abstract
In this study Health Impact Assessment (HIA) methods were used to evaluate potential health benefits related to keeping air pollution levels in Poland under certain threshold concentrations. Impacts of daily mean particulate matter (PM)10 levels on hospital admissions due to cardiovascular and respiratory [...] Read more.
In this study Health Impact Assessment (HIA) methods were used to evaluate potential health benefits related to keeping air pollution levels in Poland under certain threshold concentrations. Impacts of daily mean particulate matter (PM)10 levels on hospital admissions due to cardiovascular and respiratory diseases were considered. Relative risk coefficients were adopted from WHO HRAPIE project. The analyses covered period from 2015 to 2017, and were limited to the heating season (1st and 4th quarter of the year), when the highest PM10 concentrations occur. The national total number of hospital admissions attributed to PM10 concentration exceeding WHO daily Air Quality Guideline value of 50 µg/m3 was calculated for each of the 46 air quality zones established in Poland. We found that the reduction of the attributable hospital admissions by 75% or 50% of that expected for the “best case scenario”, with no days with PM10 concentration exceeding 50 µg/m3 would require avoidance of exceedance by the daily mean PM10 concentration of 64 µg/m3 and 83 µg/m3, respectively. These concentrations were proposed as the information and alert thresholds, respectively. The alert thresholds were exceeded on 2 and 38 days per year in the least and the most polluted zones, respectively. Exceedances of the information thresholds occurred on 6 and 66 days in these zones. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban Air Pollution: Monitoring, Impact, and Mitigation)
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