Harmonisation... Conferences Belgirate Outcome Closing discussion

The 7th International Conference on Harmonisation within Atmospheric Dispersion Modelling for Regulatory Purposes (Belgirate, Italy, May 2001)

Closing discussion

Summary of closing discussion held on Thursday May 31, 2001 in Belgirate.

Who should read this?

This discussion summary is primarily of interest to participants in the Harmonisation conference and for people involved in related work.
If you do not belong to these groups, but are looking for tools that you can use in your work, go to the web page "Outcome of discussions and announcements of common tools".

Overview

The closing discussion included the following items

• Information from the Harmonisation steering committee meeting
• Summaries from group meetings
• Input from panel and the audience
• Closing

Information from the steering committee meeting

Of particular interest is the announcement that the 8th Harmonisation conference will be held in Sofia, Bulgaria in October 2002 with Ekaterina Batchvarova as principal organiser.

At the steering committee Monday evening the committee had discussed how the proceedings of the 7th conferences should be published. This discussion was also taken up during the closing session. As a result of the discussion it is the plan to make the proceedings available through the web. Following the approval of the authors, the extended abstracts will become posted on the conference web site. In addition, the authors are left free to publish their work in a journal of their own choice. There seemed to be only little interest in having papers published through the International Journal of Environment and Pollution.

Summaries from the group meetings

There had been three group meetings on Wednesday May 30 with the following topics

• An exercise in support of CAFE organised by the JRC/Ispra
• The Poedbielski strasse exercise
• Meeting on harmonisation and model evaluation

During the closing discussion there were short reports from these meetings.

C. Cuvelier outlined the plans for an exercise in support of the CAFE programme (Clean Air For Europe), which will be co-ordinated by the JRC/Ispra, but with work carried out by volunteering groups. There will be two parts of the exercise: one part consists in running air quality models for four European cities, while the other deals with a closer study of the city of Marseille where an extensive experimental campaign is carried out.

E-mail with information will be sent to all participants of the Harmonisation conference.

Concerning the group meeting on harmonisation and model evaluation (Helge R. Olesen), see the web page "Summary of meeting on harmonisation and model evaluation".

Input from the audience

The closing session included comments, questions and suggestions from the audience. A number of items brought forward are listed below in keyword form - some with a bit of accompanying explanation.

1. Summary paper

   It was suggested that a summary paper on the Harmonisation activities should be published in one of the more prominent journals. H.R. Olesen (assisted by S. Hanna) will carry this idea further.

2. There is a need for harmonisation within the use of models

   Differences in the outcome from models are often determined more by the way in which the models are used, rather than in differences between models.

3. Should we complete stack model evaluation methods and then move on...?

   Can we define a "best performing model" and get consensus? A "band of acceptance" for model performance may be a more realistic approach.

4. Models are getting complex and the role of "developers" is changing

   At conferences in the past, models used to be presented by a model developer who would know his model and could respond to questions. It is now common with complex models, where model developers do not know their entire model intimately.

5. Uniform air quality standards (for the world)?

   The job of consultants is made complicated by the fact that air quality standards differ widely between countries. It was argued that it would be desirable with uniform AQ standards. On the other hand, AQ standards are determined very much by political and economic considerations, making it hard to achieve universal standards.

6. Are we getting the regulatory community involved enough?

   The audience at the harmonisation conferences is primarily model developers, while there are fewer model users and regulators. For the forthcoming conference it should be considered what more can be done to attract regulators.

7. Send e-mail with web addresses

   An e-mail message should be sent to the conference participants, reminding them of the existence of the AtmosphericDispersion electronic discussion list, of the ASTM site and of the web site with conference publications (see the web page: "Outcome..." for details).

This summary was written by Helge R. Olesen. Comments and corrections are welcome.