Abstract

According to the World Health Organization air pollution is the single largest environmental health risk. Therefore, air quality is a key factor for human health protection and quality of life. Since urban areas are hot spots of air pollution they have become a focus in recent research.

To understand air pollution variability in cities, to assess the related health risks, to study socio-economic effects and to introduce measures for improving the air quality, area-wide, multi-temporal and high-resolution observations are strongly required. Currently, pollutants are measured by ground-based monitoring networks with a partly sparse coverage and a heterogeneous distribution among cities worldwide.

Since remote sensing methods have long been applied from ground, aircraft and satellites, they have demonstrated their capability in closing this gap. The limitations of remote sensing methods are well known; however, it is not clear whether the full potential of the methodology has already been exploited for studying single cities or comparing specific aspects of cities worldwide.

This Special Session invites papers on applications of remote sensing and other data sources, for studying urban air quality and its relation to the environment, meteorology, health risks and socio-economic aspects.