Air quality monitoring: Optimization of a network around a hypothetical potash plant in open countryside

A method to design air quality monitoring networks (AQMN) is presented. This technique leads to an optimal network, i.e. a network providing maximum information with minimum measurement devices. The spatial correlation analysis technique is used to compare the information given by the potential sites that may form the network. The concept of potential of violation is defined to take into account the number of times that the maximum concentration values tolerated by law are exceeded. Both objectives are weighted automatically through an adjustable parameter b, for which an estimation procedure depending on the purpose of the network has been developed in this study. As an illustration of the method, an AQMN to perform an analysis of the environmental impact due to a hypothetical potash processing plant is designed.