Air quality monitoring systems in Kyiv

Abstract

Anthropogenic impact on the environment is growing every year. It deteriorates the living conditions of humans and other organisms and leads to global environmental crises. The atmosphere is especially sensitive to the influences in which processes progress more intensively than in other components of the environment. Kyiv takes one of the first places among the cities of Ukraine by the level of pollution. To make the necessary management decisions for improving air quality, detailed information is required about the level of air pollution, pollutants and sources of their formation, changes in time, etc. In developed countries, these functions are performed by different national pollution monitoring systems, which are automated and computerized and display real-time information. Today, the national environmental monitoring system in Ukraine is only being formed, so it is important to determine the most acceptable areas for its development. The capital should be a model for other cities. Hence, a modern system of environmental monitoring should be one of the main priorities of the current city administration. Today, the monitoring of air quality in the capital is carried out by several entities. Conventionally, the main monitoring organization is the Central Geophysical Observatory (CGO), which has 16 monitoring points in Kyiv and publishes some (25 %) of the obtained information on its website. A significant advantage of the information from CGO is its compliance with current regulations of Ukraine. Such information includes all necessary contaminants. Today, CGO has the most detailed information about air quality for a long-term period. The last few years have been characterized by intensive development of private air quality monitoring systems in the capital: LUN City, Save Dnipro, Air Visual, luftdaten.info and others. They belong to various organizations, have sufficient coverage of the city, but analyze air quality only by the content of 1–10 µm particles, which is not enough for a complete analysis and assessment of air pollution. Most of these monitoring systems are more like advertising or designed to create a network of observation posts by citizens themselves. Therefore, such systems cannot be considered full-fledged air quality monitoring systems. Several years ago, the Kyiv City State Administration decided to create a modern open-resource automated air quality monitoring system in the capital. Today four observation posts have been installed. Such posts correspond to the current European level of air monitoring and provide real-time detailed information about the air pollution level. The air quality monitoring system in the capital is likely to be developed by creation of new modern observation posts according to the Kyiv City State Administration program, especially if it is not commercialized or privatized in the future.