IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-00778417.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Pollution models and inverse distance weighting: some critical remarks

Author

Listed:
  • Louis de Mesnard

    (LEG - Laboratoire d'Economie et de Gestion - UB - Université de Bourgogne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

When evaluating the impact of pollution, measurements from remote stations are often weighted by the inverse of distance raised to some nonnegative power (IDW). This is derived from Shepard's method of spatial interpolation (1968). The paper discusses the arbitrary character of the exponent of distance and the problem of monitoring stations that are close to the reference point. From elementary laws of physics, it is determined which exponent of distance should be chosen (or its upper bound) depending on the form of pollution encountered, such as radiant pollution (including radioactivity and sound), air pollution (plumes, puffs, and motionless clouds by using the classical Gaussian model), and polluted rivers. The case where a station is confused with the reference point (or zero distance) is also discussed: in real cases this station imposes its measurement on the whole area regardless of the measurements made by other stations. This is a serious flaw when evaluating the mean pollution of an area. However, it is shown that this is not so in the case of a continuum of monitoring stations, and the measurement at the reference point and for the whole area may differ, which is satisfactory.

Suggested Citation

  • Louis de Mesnard, 2013. "Pollution models and inverse distance weighting: some critical remarks," Post-Print hal-00778417, HAL.
  • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00778417
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Guimbeau, Amanda & Ji, Xinde James & Long, Zi & Menon, Nidhiya, 2023. "Ocean Salinity, Early-Life Health, and Adaptation," IZA Discussion Papers 16463, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Mohammad Hashem Askariyeh & Suriya Vallamsundar & Josias Zietsman & Tara Ramani, 2019. "Assessment of Traffic-Related Air Pollution: Case Study of Pregnant Women in South Texas," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(13), pages 1-19, July.
    3. Lixin Li & Xiaolu Zhou & Marc Kalo & Reinhard Piltner, 2016. "Spatiotemporal Interpolation Methods for the Application of Estimating Population Exposure to Fine Particulate Matter in the Contiguous U.S. and a Real-Time Web Application," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 13(8), pages 1-20, July.
    4. Lixin Li & Travis Losser & Charles Yorke & Reinhard Piltner, 2014. "Fast Inverse Distance Weighting-Based Spatiotemporal Interpolation: A Web-Based Application of Interpolating Daily Fine Particulate Matter PM 2.5 in the Contiguous U.S. Using Parallel Programming and ," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 11(9), pages 1-41, September.
    5. Luis Sarmiento, 2022. "Air pollution and the productivity of high‐skill labor: evidence from court hearings," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 124(1), pages 301-332, January.
    6. Julia Rechlitz & Luis Sarmiento & Aleksandar Zaklan, 2020. "Make Sure the Kids are OK: Indirect Effects of Ground-Level Ozone on Well-Being," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1877, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    7. Li, Zhouyuan & Liu, Xuehua & Ma, Tianxiao & Kejia, De & Zhou, Qingping & Yao, Bingquan & Niu, Tianlin, 2013. "Retrieval of the surface evapotranspiration patterns in the alpine grassland–wetland ecosystem applying SEBAL model in the source region of the Yellow River, China," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 270(C), pages 64-75.
    8. Guimbeau, Amanda & Ji, Xinde & Menon, Nidhiya & Long, Zi, 2022. "An Extra Grain of Salt: The Effect of Salinity Exposure on Early Life Health Outcomes in Coastal Bangladesh," 2022 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Anaheim, California 322076, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    9. Luis Sarmiento, 2020. "Waiting for My Sentence: Air Pollution and the Productivity of Court Rulings," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1878, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    10. Ifaei, Pouya & Farid, Alireza & Yoo, ChangKyoo, 2018. "An optimal renewable energy management strategy with and without hydropower using a factor weighted multi-criteria decision making analysis and nation-wide big data - Case study in Iran," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 357-372.
    11. George E. Halkos & Dimitra C. Kitsou, 2018. "Weighted location differential tax in environmental problems," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 20(1), pages 1-15, January.
    12. Yichao Xu & Zhiqiang Jiang & Yi Liu & Li Zhang & Jiahao Yang & Hairun Shu, 2023. "An Adaptive Ensemble Framework for Flood Forecasting and Its Application in a Small Watershed Using Distinct Rainfall Interpolation Methods," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 37(5), pages 2195-2219, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00778417. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.