Public defence in geoinformatics, M.Sc. (Tech.) Ville-Veikko Paunu

Title of the thesis: Put emissions on the map – geospatial approach to air pollution emission analysis

Doctoral student: Ville-Veikko Paunu

Opponents: 
Professor Alfred Stein, University of Twente, The Netherlands
Professor Rafael Borge Garcia, The Technical University of Madrid (UPM), Spain

Custos: Professor Emerita Kirsi Virrantaus, Aalto University School of Engineering, Department of Built Environment

New methods for spatial distribution of air pollution emissions

Air pollution causes harmful health effects, and emission estimates are important when the effects are assessed. New doctoral research studied, how the location of the emissions can be estimated and how the quality of the estimation can be assessed. The research focused especially on spatial distribution of small-scale wood combustion, road transport, and machinery emissions. The main data in the study was a Nordic emissions air pollution inventory developed during the research. Researcher Ville-Veikko Paunu from Finnish Environment Institute (Syke) will defend his thesis at Aalto University on January 31st. 

In Paunu’s PhD research no single method for assessing the uncertainty of locations of emissions that would be suitable for all cases was found. However, comparison of two or more emission datasets was found to be a viable method to assess the quality of the location data. The assessment utilized comparison of data used to spatially distribute the emissions, comparison of emission maps, and a statistical method developed specifically for spatial data. Using these methods, the Nordic dataset was compared to both a European dataset and local level datasets. 

The comparisons showed, that when estimating the location of the emissions, differences between urban and rural areas was crucial. Furthermore, local characteristics need to be considered in the estimation. For example, for residential wood combustion, Finland has more sauna stoves and masonry heaters than the other Nordic counties, whereas in Norway wood stoves in apartment buildings are more common than elsewhere. 

The research showed that high spatial resolution should be used in modelling when health impacts from local emissions are assessed. The quality of spatial distribution of air pollution emissions is especially important in cities, where population density is higher. 

In his research Paunu applied geospatial methods in a new way to air pollution emission estimation. In the research the spatial distribution of three major pollution sources sectors and assessment of their quality were developed. The results help to develop more detailed emission datasets and support air pollution health impact assessment.

Keywords: Air pollution emissions, spatial interpolation, spatial distribution, spatial proxy, resolution

Thesis available for public display 10 days prior to the defence at: https://aaltodoc.aalto.fi/doc_public/eonly/riiputus/ 

Contact information of doctoral student:

Doctoral theses of the School of Engineering: https://aaltodoc.aalto.fi/handle/123456789/49

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