AAAR 36th Annual Conference October 16 - October 20, 2017 Raleigh Convention Center Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
Abstract View
Optimizing Urban Green Designs to Mitigate Traffic-Related Air Pollution
KHALED HASHAD, Bo Yang, K. Max Zhang, Cornell University
Abstract Number: 461 Working Group: Passive Mitigation Strategies to Reduce Exposure to Near-Road Air Pollution
Abstract Near-road vegetation could mitigate the impact of traffic-related air pollutants on human exposure to the community. The way vegetation is structured influences plume transport and if strategically designed, the vegetation layout would aid in reducing downwind pollutant concentrations. To explore different urban green designs, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD)-based model was employed to model the vegetation as a sink for both fluid momentum and pollutants. We performed a case study for an urban park located between a busy expressway and a residential community in Louisville, Kentucky. We studied three different design scenarios: the current conditions with sparse vegetation, a case with no vegetation, and a structured design with dense vegetation. The impact of the different designs was studied by comparing the downwind pollutant concentration for each case. The case with structured vegetation had the lowest particle number concentrations while the case with sparse vegetation had the highest concentrations. This demonstrates that vegetation could also have adverse effects if not implemented properly, which creates a need to examine and determine the different vegetation designs and study their impact. Vegetation designs should be done in a scientifically driven manner to obtain optimal results and reduce the amount of pollutants reaching the community.