Multi-criteria selection of an Air Quality Model configuration based on quantitative and linguistic evaluations

• Linguistic evaluation of plume transport as a model performance criterion.
• Two non-dominated model configurations can be used in future simulations.
• Local Trend Associations complements statistical evaluation of model performance.

This study presents the application of multi-criteria evaluation in the selection of an optimal configuration for an Air Quality Model. The simulation domains focus on the Mexico City Metropolitan Area. A set of 10 different configurations were considered as alternatives. These configurations included convective parameterization, 6th order diffusion and exclusion of data assimilation within the Planetary Boundary Layer. In addition, model integration in a continuous setup and in a segmented setup was also considered. The modeling variables were surface temperature, wind speed, wind direction, and sulfur dioxide. The performance of the meteorological fields was evaluated with statistical metrics together with the Local Trend Association measure and further used as criteria. The air pollution field was evaluated qualitatively with five expert-based linguistic criteria and further converted into numerical terms. Meteorological variables and sulfur dioxide were aggregated into two single arrays, one for representing meteorology and the other for representing transport of a large industrial plume. Pareto Fronts were constructed for these two arrays under different weights scenarios. Results suggested that a model with no parameterizations in continuous integration setup and a model with segmented integrations using 6th order diffusion were the optimal configurations to conduct future air quality studies.