Computationally Efficient Pollutant Dispersion Calculation

Air dispersion modelling has become one of the main tools in the study of air quality whereby it is a key element in most environmental impact assessments. Almost every human activity and natural process leads to some form of air pollution. Therefore, air dispersion modelling is a powerful technique to evaluate whether a source creates a problem. Considering climate change, sustainable design and planning of our cities is essential, but alpine regions and urban areas pose several problems to the correct investigation of air pollutant concentrations.

In general, two different models will be considered, namely the Gaussian Plume Model and the Stochastic Lagrangian Particle Model.

The goal is to extend these models to alpine regions and urban areas respectively to different source types, deposition and reflection to predict a concentration profile. The implementation of the pollutant models, which are carried out in R, C and CUDA are developed together with the theory.

The transition from theory to computational efficiency poses many open questions and even the modelling itself is not yet mature. Therefore, mathematical and statistical as well as meteorological knowledge about discrete and continuous stochastic dynamics is necessary.