Mortality weighting-based method for aggregate urban air risk assessment

This paper deals with a mortality-weighted synthetic evaluation (MWSE) method for evaluating urban air risk. Sulphur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxide (NOx), and particulate matter (PM10) were used as pollution indices. The urban area of Hangzhou, China is divided into 756 grid cells, with a resolution of 1 km×1 km, and is evaluated using the MWSE and the air quality index (AQI), a widely-used method to evaluate ambient air quality and air risk. In an evaluation of one day in April 2004, the surface areas categorized as levels I and III, as defined by the integrated air risk evaluation, were 27.3% and 3.3% lower, respectively, than grades I and III defined by the AQI evaluation. Meanwhile, the areas classified as level II or above level III by the integrated air risk evaluation were 55.1% and 101.1% higher, respectively, than grade II or above grade III when using the AQI evaluation. From this comparison, we find that the MWSE method is more sensitive than the AQI method. The AQI method uses a single index to assess integrated air quality and is therefore unable to evaluate integrated air risks due to multiple pollutants. The MWSE method overcomes this problem, providing improved accuracy in air risk assessment.