A least-cost approach to personal exposure reduction.

Davies, Gemma and Whyatt, J. Duncan (2009) A least-cost approach to personal exposure reduction. Transactions in GIS, 13 (2). pp. 229-246. ISSN 1361-1682

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Abstract

Concerns over the potential negative health effects from exposure to air pollution have led to interest in assessing personal exposure and finding ways to reduce it. As journey-time exposure accounts for a disproportionately high amount of an individual’s total exposure, this article assesses the potential to apply least-cost techniques within a GIS in order to identify paths of lower journey-time exposure. The methodology adopted uses pollution surfaces for PM10 and CO generated by the dispersion model ADMS, with an analysis mask derived from OS MasterMap to create a least-cost surface. Actual routes taken by a cohort of 11–13 year old children on their journeys to school are used to compare observed journey time exposure with the exposure along alternative routes generated using the least-cost path function. While the least-cost approach proved to be successful in defining low exposure routes the ability to scale up this approach is constrained by the amount of editing required to successfully create an analysis mask from OS MasterMap data. Such alternative routes have the potential to assist in promoting safer environmental choices, however, their likelihood of adoption is dependant on a number of social and environmental influences which affect an individual’s route choice.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Transactions in GIS
Additional Information:
Funded by ESRC Small Grant RES-000-22-2023
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1900/1900
Subjects:
?? mastermap • air pollution • journey-time exposure • space-timegeneral earth and planetary sciencesearth and planetary sciences(all)g geography (general) ??
ID Code:
26317
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
29 Apr 2009 12:17
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
30 Sep 2024 23:56