Apulia region in the Southern Italy is frequently characterised by high photochemical pollution levels in the warm period
and by high levels of PM10 and NO2 in the winter season. Emissions in the area derive essentially from urban, shipping and
industrial activities. The main industrial activities are related to the iron and steel industry (one of the largest in Europe) on the
western coast and to two coal power plants on the eastern coastline.
A GIS based air quality system has been developed to support local authorities in air quality management for the region. The
proposed modeling system is based on RAMS (Pielke et al., 1992) and CALMET (Scire et al., 2000) meteorological models and on
CALPUFF (Scire et al., 2000)/ CALGRID (Yamartino et al., 1989) dispersion models.
Diffuse emissions for the domain were obtained from the national CORINAIR data base (www.sinanet.apat.gov.it) and were preprocessed
by a new-developed tool GEM-PP (Gis EMission Pre-Processor) based on open source GIS. Point sources emissions are
obtained by local inventory.
Meteorological and dispersion simulations were performed for the year 2005. Predictions have been compared with concentration
data from the air quality monitoring network. Results evidence a good correlation between predictions and measurements for O3,
NOx, SO2 with most of data in factor of two of the measurements for rural stations and a tendency to underestimate measured data in
urban stations. Overall the model tends to underestimate CO measurements. The uncertainty of the predictions are analysed and
discussed in terms of the emission calculations, dispersion modelling and monitoring site
