The second step to assess the impact of any industrial activity on the environment is to elaborate an Air Dispersion Model (ADM) to understand the Ground Level Concentrations (GLCs) at the nearby sensitive receptors. The ADM enables to have a deep understanding on the influence of meteorological conditions as well as geographical constraints on the plume pattern that can carry pollutants over very long distances in a very short time.
The ADM can be also run to assess the footprint of a project that is still in the initial feasibility study phase and provides valuable information of the worst case scenario. To perform this kind of modeling a Screening approach is used and the combination of the most unfavorable meteorological conditions is used by the prediction model.
Depending on the extension of the modeling domain, different mathematical formulations can be used to better simulate the scenario to be assessed ranging from steady-state Gaussian plume to a Lagrangian particle tracking modeling.
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