A Procedure for Air Monitoring Instrumentation Location

The attainment and enforcement of air quality standards is a complicated process. A crucial element in this process is the measurement of ambient air quality. The selection of locations for a limited number of monitors and their sampling frequencies is an important problem in the design of a regional air quality measurement system. This paper presents a mathematical model and procedure for solving the problem and demonstrates the conflicting nature of the principal guidelines specified by EPA. The method uses atmospheric simulation to assess the likelihood of standards violations, and linear programming to select the monitor locations and sampling frequencies. Since atmospheric simulation is required by EPA, the method appears to be accessible to virtually all local agencies. The use of linear programming permits extensive sensitivity analysis, which is illustrated in a case study. In particular, the trade-offs between conflicting EPA guidelines can be explicitly analyzed. The computational burden is primarily in the atmospheric simulation and is roughly proportional to the area of the region being studied. The added computational burden represented by the model solution is quite small.