When viewing results from an air dispersion model run, the primary concern of many modelers are conditions measured at receptors located in areas generally accessible by the public. This may preclude modeling from occurring within well-defined property boundaries that restrict public access to a facility.
AERSURFACE is a tool developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) which uses digital land cover data to objectively calculate numeric values of surface characteristics (i.e. albedo, Bowen ratio, and surface roughness) required by AERMET, the meteorological preprocessor for the AERMOD air dispersion model.
The latest update to AERMOD View, Version 9.7, expands the discrete receptor import capabilities making it easier to add receptors – including sensitive receptors – to a project. Using the application-supported CSV file format, AERMOD View can now import additional parameters such as Receptor ID and sensitive receptor flags.
The latest update to AERMET View (Version 9.7) includes a new tool which automates the process of assessing meteorological data quality using advanced quality assurance (QA) procedures. In a previous Modeling Tip, we highlighted the QA options built into the AERMET model. The tool analyzes the surface file output by AERMET (*.SFC) and reports quality of variables being passed to the AERMOD model.
AERMAP is the US EPA’s terrain preprocessor for the AERMOD modeling system. AERMAP reads digital terrain data (e.g., USGS 3DEP [formerly NED] digital elevation models in GeoTIFF format) and calculates base elevations for sources and receptors and hill height scale factors for receptors. An integral part of executing AERMAP is identifying the files which will cover the modeling domain and satisfy these calculations.
Most air dispersion modeling analyses will result in a large number of data files. Besides input and output files, projects can contain meteorological data, terrain data, digital base maps, and other external data files. Whether you’re modeling a simple scenario in AERMOD or a complex regional study in CALPUFF, there will be many different file types to account for.