This news article was originally written in Spanish. It has been automatically translated for your convenience. Reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate translation, however, no automated translation is perfect nor is it intended to replace a human translator. The original article in Spanish can be viewed at La UCO propone un nuevo método de análisis de contaminación urbana
The UCO proposes a new method of analysis of urban pollution
23/05/2011
May 23, 2011
A research group of the University of Córdoba proposed the multifractal analysis to study urban pollution. It's a technique that allows you to describe the influence of urban morphology on the spatial and temporal distribution of pollutants. "We wanted to explore a different approach to one of the major social concerns, urban pollution," explains Francisco Jose Jimenez Hornero. The Professor of the UCO is coordinator of the project of excellence Multifractal analysis of urban pollution caused by road traffic.
"The classical analysis, like the descriptive statistics, are not able to respond fully to this issue." In this sense we must differentiate between the neighbourhoods with narrow streets and broad avenues and with greater density of traffic. "After studying all possible options, this group of researchers chose the multifractal analysis as the most appropriate method to complete the existing analysis on pollution", explains Professor Jiménez Hornero.
In his method of study the Panel has taken into account factors present in the urban environment as ozone and meteorological variables, as the temperature, humidity, direction and speed of the wind, and solar radiation, that they have a direct impact on its concentration. "Both agents weather as chemicals are studied in the production of this gas in large quantities, is harmful to health", adds Jiménez Hornero. Another object of interest in this project is the spatial and temporal distribution of small polluting particles suspended in the air, known as PM10, which are product, one of whose sources is road traffic. The results obtained in this project may be useful to check the quality of data generated by models of urban pollution. These models provides a few scenarios of expansion of the city and growth of the number of cars and predicted the spatial and temporal evolution of the pollution. The corresponding multifractal analysis would give validity to the results if it is confirmed the pollutants studied manifest certain characteristics at different scales of analysis.
