An investigative micro-computer model of European sulphur dioxide pollution

✍ Scribed by N.J. Butterworth; S.R. Watson

• Book ID: 104339209
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1987
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 849 KB
• Volume: 32
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0377-2217
• DOI: 10.1016/s0377-2217(87)80141-8

✦ Synopsis

Industrial and domestic emissions of sulphur dioxide cause considerable concern in both Europe and North America. It is claimed that such emissions cause widespread damage to forests, lakes, crops, materials and human health and that it is highly desirable to control emissions. Other people have claimed that the costs of control are likely far to outweigh any benefits received and that much of the observed damage is not due to sulphur emissions at all.

We have constructed an interactive, micro-computer based model for the Department of the Environment which is intended to allow a decision maker to probabilistically investigate the various claimed relationships between sulphur emissions and the damage categories listed above. In this way the decision maker can identify critical areas for future research, perform sensitivity analysis and produce distributions on likely control costs and damage reductions rather than a single expected value.

This paper discusses the underlying philosophy of the model and some details of practical implementation.