Abstract
An Air Quality Package of programs (AQPAC) was developed by the Atmospheric Environment Service (AES) to assist meteorologists at regional weather centres across Canada in response to accidental release of toxic chemicals into the atmosphere. The computer package of programs are written in an interactive, user friendly mode for use on the regional AES mini-computers (HP-1000). The special advantage of this package is all programs are capable of utilizing the mini-computer’s resident real-time observed weather data base of the most recent 24 hours duration from all weather stations of the North American continent. Physical processes such as plume rise, limited mixing, dry and wet deposition, chemical decay rate and ground contamination are formulated in short-range Gaussian dispersion models. The concentration of pollutants in air is estimated at receptors in three dimensional space and results are displayed both in tabular and graphical forms. Included in the package is a medium-range surface trajectory model (< 1000 km) for diagnostic and impact analysis.
The package provides numerical results, hazardous zone and chemical information in a very short time, so that their use is highly effective to decision makers. The concept behind the development of this package is its practicality and its applicability for both nuclear and non-nuclear accidents. The practicality of these programs to respond in a very short time and at any remote site through an acoustic coupler to the minicomputer are specifically attractive features for application in environmental emergency situations. The Version 1 of AQPAC is now operational at all AES regional weather centres. An updated AQPAC, Version 4 is operational at AES Headquarters and soon it will be implemented at other weather centres.
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© 1988 D. Reidel Publishing Company
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Daggupaty, S.M. (1988). Response to Accidental Release of Toxic Chemicals into the Atmosphere Using—AQPAC. In: El-Sabh, M.I., Murty, T.S. (eds) Natural and Man-Made Hazards. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1433-9_40
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1433-9_40
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