Author(s)

F. Patania, A. Gagliano, F. Nocera, A. Galesi & A. D’Amico

Abstract

The piling up of many cars in restricted areas could produce dangerous effects on the health of inhabitants of surrounding quarters of a city, especially if there is a very big concentration of vehicles in the area as happens in multi-floor car parks. To test the degree of risk and the way for its control, people carried out an applied research in Taormina city, having as a target two multi-floor car parks: the \“Lumbi”, about 400m from the city centre and \“Catania Gate”, very close to the southern part of the city centre. Previously, people carried out an aimed survey on vehicular traffic both going to and coming from the parks, as well as on the stop-times of the cars inside. Subsequently, research proceeded by application of a steady state Gaussian plume model ISC3 (Industrial Source Complex), able to operate both in \“short terms” and \“long terms”, under the hypothesis to consider the whole volume of each parking as a complex source of exhausts. Finally, people carried out a campaign of measurements of concentration of tracer gas in suitable zones of the investigated area. The aim of the paper is to show results pointed out by comparison between forecasted data and those ones measured drawing out peculiar situations in the case of the application of computer code: - the trend of pollutant concentrations of tracer gas in inhabited area located between the two investigate parks - the status of air pollution with reference to the limit of Italian environmental legislation - some possible remedies to try to reduce the pollutant concentrations in the case of overcoming of alarm limits. Keywords: Gaussian model, air pollution, car parking, exhaust gases.

Keywords

Gaussian model, air pollution, car parking, exhaust gases.