Simulating the impact of urban sprawl on air quality and population exposure in the German Ruhr area. Part I: Reproducing the base state

Compact city forms are associated with minimal consumption of land and energy, hence, they are often promoted as being the more sustainable thus preferred mode of urban development. In this context, numerical simulations were performed to evaluate the effect of urban sprawl on air quality and associated human exposure. Working on a highly urbanised area in the German Ruhrgebiet, models dealing with satellite data processing, traffic flows, pollutant emission and atmospheric dispersion were applied in an integrated fashion, under conditions representative of the urbanised area as it is today. A fair agreement was obtained between simulated and observed meteorological variables, as well as between simulated and observed concentrations of ozone and particulate matter. Simulated atmospheric pollution fields were found to closely reflect urbanisation patterns. In a companion paper [De Ridder, K., Lefebre, F., Adriaensen, S., Arnold, U., Beckroege, W., Bronner, C., Damsgaard, O., Dostal, I., Dufek, J., Hirsch, J., IntPanis, L., Kotek, Z., Ramadier, T., Thierry, A., Vermoote, S., Wania, A., Weber, C., 2008. Simulating the impact of urban sprawl on air quality and population exposure in the German Ruhr area. Part II: Development and evaluation of an urban growth scenario], the results of this base case simulation will be compared with those of a scenario simulation, designed to mimic urban sprawl, so as to allow the evaluation of the latter on air quality and associated human exposure.