Page 14 - Çevre Şehir ve İklim Dergisi İngilizce - Özel Sayı

BREATH: THE SOURCE OF LIFE

“AIR QUALITY MODELLING APPLICATIONS”

İrde ÇETİNTÜRK GÜRTEPE - Fatih TURAN - Fatma VARANK

ABSTRACT
The quality of our breath, the most basic source of life, is critical to our well-
being. Therefore, air quality management is one of the most fundamental
environmental strategies. Because of its transboundary, transportable, and
dynamic nature, air quality management requires global cooperation. Türkiye
was among the first to join the UN Convention on Long-Range Transboundary
Air Pollution (LRTAP), which was developed in this regard.
At the national level, air was the first environmental theme for which legislation was
issued based on the Environmental Law. The Air Emission Management portal was
created to improve air quality through transparent, common database sharing. Its
motto is “You cannot manage what you do not know.” The Ministry runs air quality
models on its servers to produce maps with kilometer resolution, showing the
temporal and spatial distribution of air quality. After developing the scenarios, the
most effective ones for improving air quality are identified and turned into policies.
On the other hand, the battle against pollution is bolstered by pinpointing and
controlling sources of short- lived air pollutants in densely populated urban areas.
The Ministry of Environment, Urbanisation, and Climate Change developed the
NEFES (New Emission Forecast & Evaluation System) software, which allows for
the precise measurement of pollution sources and air quality values on digital
twins of cities with meter precision.
With the modelling applications developed to determine air quality levels with
high resolution, information is obtained about places where measurement data
is not available and the source of pollution can be detected and measures are
defined by different scenario studies.
In this article, general information is given on air quality, transboundary air
pollution and international obligations, national legislation prepared for the
control of air pollution and air quality modelling applications, especially NEFES
software are introduced.

Keywords: Air Quality, Air Quality Modelling, Spatial and Temporal Emission
Distribution, Transboundary Air Pollution

1
Special Issue / 2024