An Air Quality Management System for Cyprus: Evaluation and Improvements

An Air Quality Management System (AQMS) has been developed and installed in the Department of Labour Inspection of the Republic of Cyprus in order to meet the requirements of the European Air Quality Directive (2008/50/EC). Following an operational evaluation of the system's performance, several improvements of its core and interface modules have recently taken place. In an effort to optimize the core model performance, a revised methodology for determining boundary conditions (BC) has been implemented. This new BC module enables the transfer, formatting and, finally, the assimilation of concentration data originating from the ensemble forecasts of the regional scale models of the MACC Project. As a further improvement, an empirical approach for the improved estimation of a street-scale concentration increment on top of the urban background has been developed, addressing the inherent shortcoming of mesoscale models in predicting air pollution levels in traffic hotspots. The methodology incorporates a functional relationship between local meteorological parameters, street characteristics and traffic emissions, calibrated on the basis of calculated increments in representative locations. Finally, a range of additional features have been incorporated in the AQMS functionality, including a versatile reanalysis module, as well as a user interface for the analysis of weighted back trajectories.