Entropic Approach for Emission Rate Estimation of Area Pollutant Sources

The estimat ion of the area source pollutant strength is a relevant issue for atmospheric environ ment. Th is characterizes an inverse problem in the atmospheric pollution dispersion. In the inverse analysis, an area source domain is considered, where the strength of such area source term is assumed unknown. The inverse problem is formu lated as a non-linear optimization approach, whose objective function is given by the square difference between the measured pollutant concentration and the mathematical models, associated with a regularization operator. The forward problem is addressed by a source-receptor scheme, where a regressive Lagrangian model is applied to co mpute the transition matrix. A quasi-Newton method is emp loyed for minimizing the object ive function. The second order maximu m entropy regularizat ion is used, and the regularizat ion parameter is calculated by the L-curve technique. This inverse problem methodology is tested with synthetic observational data, producing good inverse solutions.