Special projects air quality monitoring

Special projects monitoring is carried out at some locations to meet special needs, usually but not always for relatively shorter periods. Some examples are:

• Incident monitoring may occur in response to incidental or emergency air pollution situations. Monitoring is often short-term, ranging from a few days to a few months, and is commissioned to assess air quality impacts of incident-related air emissions.
• Roadside monitoring collects air quality data near major roads with high traffic volumes. This monitoring will provide data to help build knowledge of road traffic emissions, validate predictive models and to support assessment of public health benefits of proposed interventions to reduce air pollution.
• Research project monitoring serves specific research projects, where the monitoring period can vary significantly across projects, but is often longer than an incident monitoring activity.

Monitoring locations and data reporting

Locations of and pollutants monitored at special monitoring stations are determined by individual project requirements. Data are reported hourly as air quality category (AQC) ratings:

• Incident monitoring data and information, including locations, will be presented on the special projects data page.

• Roadside monitoring station measures multiple pollutants including particulate matter as PM₁₀ and PM_2.5, visibility, and gaseous pollutants (oxides of nitrogen, carbon monoxide, and sulfur dioxide).

  Note that this data are not used for demonstrating compliance with the National Environment Protection (Ambient Air Quality) Measure (NEPM) as they are not representative of general population exposure.