Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollution is one of the major environmental threats to human health. To mitigate its negative impacts, it is essential to establish an effective and wide-reaching air quality monitoring network.
The main objective was to determine what portion of Poland is covered by spatially representative (SR) surface NO2 measurements from ground-based stations. The study also estimated how many people live in areas not covered by SR measurements and identified potential locations for new stations to improve the spatial representativeness of the NO2 monitoring network.
Four methods for determining SR were tested: Global Moran's I, variability of the correlation coefficient with distance from the station, variability of semivariance with distance from the station, and similarity threshold. Results demonstrated that depending on the method used, between 74–94% of the urban population and 10–30% of the rural population living in areas where the annual NO2 limit (>10 μg/m3) was exceeded, are currently covered by representative measurements.
It was proposed to add 10–17 new urban stations and 0–5 new rural stations. This would ensure that 91–98% of the Poland's population is covered by the spatially representative NO2 monitoring network.