An assessment of air-quality monitoring station locations based on satellite observations

ABSTRACT Optimization of the locations of air quality monitoring stations has great importance in providing high-quality data for regional air pollution monitoring. To assess the representativeness of the locations of the current air quality monitoring stations, we propose a new method based on satellite observations by applying the stratified sampling approach. Unlike the traditional method, which relies on the simulated spatial distribution of air pollutants from dispersion models, we obtained the sampling population through observations from remote sensing. As a first step, the spatial distribution of aggregated air quality was obtained based on ground concentrations of particulate matter (aerodynamic diameters of less than 10 μm, PM10), fine particulate matter (aerodynamic diameters of less than 2.5 μm, PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and sulphur dioxide (SO2) derived from satellite observations. Second, the representativeness of locations of air quality monitoring stations was assessed using the stratified sampling method. The results demonstrated that air quality monitoring stations in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei were clustered in areas with heavily polluted air, whereas the number of air quality monitoring stations was insufficient in areas with higher air quality. After optimization, the minimum relative error was only 6.77%. It is indicated that combing remote-sensing data with the stratified sampling approach has great potential in assessing the spatial representativeness of air quality monitoring stations.