Harmonisation... Related activities and tools

Related activities and tools

Below follows a list of a number of activities which are somehow related to the initiative on Harmonisation within Atmospheric Dispersion Modelling for Regulatory Purposes.

Also note that in a presentation for the 14th Harmonisation conference (October 2011) the chairman of the Harmonisation initiative, Helge Olesen, addressed the following problem: Often scientists and model users could potentially contribute with valuable information to the modelling community - but in practice they do so only to a limited extent.
Helge Olesen pointed to the fact that the web as it exists today offers a range of opportunities, which make it easy to share information. Thus, nowadays it often requires only a small amount of extra effort to contribute to the common pool of information.
In his presentation Helge Olesen gave various practical advice on resources, which modellers can benefit from in their daily work. These resources include Google Scholar, Wikipedia, the Atmospheric Dispersion Wiki, LinkedIn, YouTube. See the paper: Improving modelling culture: Obstacles and opportunities (pdf, 150 kB).

List of related activities and tools

• Wiki on Atmospheric Dispersion Modelling (http://atmosphericdispersion.wikia.com).
  A Wiki is a website that is especially suited for collaboration. The purpose of this Wiki is to facilitate pooling of experiences within the modelling community. The Wiki has been subject for discussion at several of the conferences on Harmonisation within Atmospheric Dispersion Modelling for Regulatory Purposes. Note that the Wiki is well suited to communicate communicate experiences on experimental validation data sets (e.g. Prairie Grass, MUST, Thompson Wind Tunnel data set) Read here about the motivation for the Wiki.
• E-mail discussion list Atmospheric Dispersion in the frame of Google Groups. This is an e-mail list where people working in the field of atmospheric dispersion can post announcements and exchange experiences.
  From 2011 the list replaces a similar list, AtmosphericDispersion, which was hosted by the Dutch Surfnet organisation until the end of 2010.
  You can subscribe to the list from the web page of the Google group, http://groups.google.com/group/atmospheric-dispersion .
  Alternatively - this is simpler - you can subscribe by using the box below and respond to the confirmation mail that you receive.

  Email:

• FAIRMODE is a European modellers' network established in 2008 in support of the new EU Air Quality Directive. Its activities are in line with those of the Harmonisation... initiative. FAIRMODE is a joint initiative of the European Environment Agency (EEA) and European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC).
• Model Documentation System. The European Topic Centre on Air and Climate Change (ETC/ACC) under the European Environment Agency maintains a web-based catalogue of atmospheric dispersion models.
• Datasets for Atmospheric Modelling.. A web site providing information on and access to experimental data sets relevant for dispersion modellers was announced by Galmarini et al. in their paper: "DAM: Datasets for atmospheric modelling" for the 7the Harmonisation conference in Belgirate, 2001. Presently, more than 100 data sets are catalogued. The scientific community is encouraged to use this site and to provide updated information for it. See http://rem.jrc.cec.eu.int/dam
• Atmospheric Transport and Diffusion Data Archive (www.jsirwin.com) Web site providing access to data sets from classic tracer and meteorological field experiments, such as Prairie Grass, Kincaid etc. A project undertaken by John Irwin, retired from the US NOAA/EPA.
• COST 710. An international action on "Harmonization in the preprocessing of meteorological data for dispersion models" (COST 710) has taken place in the framework of COST (1994-1997). A final report is available.
• COST 715. An international action "Meteorology applied to Urban Air Pollution Problems" acted as a follow-up to COST 710 and ended in 2004. It aimed at increasing knowledge of, and accessibility to, the main meteorological parameters which determine urban pollution levels. Two final reports are available.
• COST 732. An international action "Quality Assurance and Improvement of Micro-Scale Meteorological Models" took place 2005-2009. Its objective was to improve and assure the quality of micro-scale meteorological models that are applied for predicting flow and transport processes in urban or industrial environments. It has produced a set of official documents with guidance on CFD modelling and model evaluation. See the the Official documents page.
• COST 615. Four international actions on "Science and research for better air in European cities" (COST CITAIR) have taken place in the framework of COST in the mid-1990's. One of the actions was COST 615: "Database, Monitoring and Modelling of Urban Air Pollution". This action has resulted in inventories of databases, projects and models.
• Model intercomparison tool: Protocol and data archive:   In the UK, a tool for model intercomparison has been developed and used for an intercomparsion study of the three models AERMOD, ADMS and ISC. The tool can be used for other models as well. Please note that the tool allows model intercomparison, but not model evaluation (there is no comparison with actual measurements).
  The tool has its value because it allows a systematic intercomparison of model behaviour under varying conditions with respect to meteorology, source configuration and topography. A limitation of any tool like the present is that it cannot identify whether one model is better than another, because it does not include concentration measurements.

The above links are the most central in relation to the work of the initiative. However, several other links of high relevance deserve to be mentioned:

• SATURN - Studying Atmospheric Pollution in Urban Areas. Subproject of EUROTRAC-2.
• TRAPOS Optimisation of Modelling Methods for Traffic Pollution in Streets
• EURASAP (European Association for the Science of Air Pollution)
• SCRAM (Support Center for Regulatory Air Quality Models) of the US EPA.
• Urban climate e-mail list.