ASTM Standard Guide: Overview of materials
This document provides an overview of available materials concerning the ASTM "Standard
Guide for Statistical Evaluation of Atmospheric Dispersion
Models".
Note that in September 2003 a revised package of materials has
become available at the FTP web site of John Irwin.
The draft standard and the software implementation of its methodology
has essentially been developed by John Irwin of the US NOAA.
Some supplementary information and tools were added by H.R. Olesen, NERI,
Denmark, but these tools etc. refer to earlier versions of the John Irwin's
materials. They are provided here for the benefit of those wishing to dive deeply into working with the ASTM procedure.
We advise you to make contact with John Irwin (e-mail
irwin.john@epa.gov ) or Helge Rørdam Olesen (hro@dmu.dk) if
you wish to work seriously with the materials - in that manner it will be possible for us
to keep you informed on experiences and developments.
The remainder of this document is a key to available resources. It comprises four
sections:
Overview of available materials
- Package of
materials available from John Irwin's FTP site. It contains data sets from
Kincaid, Indianapolis and Prairie Grass prepared for use in conjunction with
the ASTM methodology. Note that the problems with assignment of monitors to
arcs at Kincaid (mentioned below) were resolved for the data in folder
KincaidReanalysis, but not in the folder Kincaid.
- Package
of materials available from John Irwin's FTP site. It contains data sets
from Kincaid, Indianapolis and Prairie Grass prepared for use in conjunction
with the ASTM methodology.
Note for Kincaid, two different approaches have been
used to assign monitors to "arcs". In the first case, human judgement was used
and these results are those in subdirectory "Kincaid". In the second case,
an objective approach was used to address concerns discussed in the CYPROB.PDF note mentioned just below, as well as in
H.R. Olesen (1999); these results are those in subdirectory "KincaidReanalysis". We have only
just recently created the results provided in KincaidReanalysis, and they have
not been employed in any of the analyses conducted to date. With either set of
Kincaid data, we have a problem that has yet to be fully resolved, that is
assigning arcs to "Regimes" for analysis within the ASTM procedure. The
Kincaid "Regime" assignments provided should be considered preliminary at
this point, and H.R. Olesen (1998) discusses this problem.
- An eight-page note (CYPROB.PDF
, 135K, June 11, 1999) by H.R. Olesen reporting on problems
with the version of Kincaid data set distributed prior to year
2000 together with the ASTM package (file KININPUT.BAK), i.e. the data which are not labelled "Reanalysis". The problems concern erroneous assignment of
monitors to arcs. The problems are serious in the sense that results using
this dataset cannot be considered trustworthy. The note also points to
problems with the determination of crosswind integrated concentrations in the NEWFIT programme, which were subsequently
addressed by John Irwin.
- Partly
outdated, only for those really interested: A brief set of additional notes by H.R. Olesen
("ASTM notes: Additional information concerning the ASTM
procedure", approx. 2
pages) contains information on errors in the basic packages (EVAL.ZIP and
ACODE.ZIP) and introduces some supplementary Fortran tools.
- Partly outdated, only for those really
interested: A note "Revised method compared to that of John Irwin" by
H.R. Olesen (approx. 3 pages) outlines a procedure, based on John Irwin's, but
with slight differences and resulting in a more flexible set of output data
(the pertinent software can be downloaded).
- Partly outdated, only for those really
interested: ASTM_SUP.ZIP
(60 K, last update March 19, 1999). ). Package (by H.R. Olesen) with
Fortran programmes etc. to supplement the programmes available from John Irwin.
The background for the proposed ASTM standard practice and various
issues related to it are discussed in the documents listed here (listed by
author):
- ASTM: (American Society for Testing and Materials): Standard
Guide for Statistical
Evaluation of Atmospheric Dispersion Models. D6589-00. This guide was
approved in autumn 2000, and is available for download at the ASTM server.
The full text of the guide costs US $ 35.
- Irwin, J.S., D. Carruthers and J. Paumier (2002):, 'Application of ASTM D6589 to
evaluate dispersion model performance to simulate average centerline concentration values',
presented at the 8th International Conference on Harmonisation within Atmospheric
Dispersion Modelling for Regulatory Purposes in Sofia, October 2002.
Extended
abstract in PDF format (200 KB).
- Irwin, J. (1999), the note "Normalized Centerline Concentration
Listings" is a read-me file accompanying certain data sets, but it also serves as a
discussion paper which explains the philosophy of the ASTM procedure and exposes the
issues involved. Available as the Acrobat (PDF) file
EXFILES.PDF (64 K).
- Irwin, J. and Rosu, M-R. (1998), ‘Comments on a Draft Practice for
Statistical Evaluation of Atmospheric Dispersion Models’, Proceedings of the 10th
Joint Conference on the Applications of Air Pollution Meteorology. American Meteorological
Society, Boston, pp. 6-10. Available from the author or as an Acrobat
(PDF) file (56 K)
- Irwin, J.S. (1998), ‘Statistical Evaluation of Atmospheric Dispersion Models’.
Presented at the 5th International Conference on Harmonisation within Atmospheric
Dispersion Modelling for Regulatory Purposes in Rhodes, May 1998. To be published in
the International Journal of Environment and Pollution . Available from the author or as an Acrobat
(PDF) file (137 K).
- Olesen, H.R., 1999, 'Model Validation Kit - Recent Developments'. Presented at the 6th
International Conference on Harmonisation within Atmospheric Dispersion Modelling for
Regulatory Purposes in Rouen, October 1999. The entire manuscript is available in Acrobat (PDF) format (65 K).
- Olesen, H.R., 1998, 'Model Validation Kit - Status and Outlook.' Presented at the 5th
International Conference on Harmonisation within Atmospheric Dispersion Modelling for
Regulatory Purposes in Rhodes, May 1998. Abstract and
conclusions. The entire manuscript is available from the
author or in Acrobat (PDF) format (180 K).
- Olesen, H.R., 1997, Tools for model evaluation. In: Air Pollution Modeling and Its
Application XII, pp. 519-528. Edited by S-E. Gryning and N. Chaumerliac, Plenum Press, New
York. Abstract and conclusions. Reprints are available from
the author.
WWW resources of interest for persons working with the ASTM
methodology:
November 14, 2003
Provided a link to the latest version of John Irwin's material at
his FTP site.
January 29, 2001
A link has been established to the final
version of the standard guide at the website of the ASTM.
October 8, 1999
A note by H.R. Olesen (CYPROB.PDF)
concerning crosswind integrated concentrations and problems with KININPUT.BAK has been
made available. The paper "Model Validation Kit - recent
developments" for the Rouen conference made available.
July 9, 1999
An updated version of ASTM_NOTES.PDF
is available here. The background for the update is that a new version of
the NEWFIT programme (dated June 14, 1999) has become available at
John Irwin's FTP site. NEWFIT is part of the ACODE(4).ZIP package. The new NEWFIT provides
alternative ways of computing crosswind integrated concentrations. This is a response to
problems with the old integration method which generally overestimates the value of
crosswind integrated concentrations.
May 10, 1999
The REG_PACK.ZIP package and the
accompanying documentation by John Irwin has been made available on this site.
March 19, 1999
The CenterCom.ZIP package and the accompanying
documentation by John Irwin has been made available on this site.
The supplementary material by H.R. Olesen is now available in a
revised version, corresponding to John Irwin's eval.zip and acode.zip packages from
February 1999. It now includes detailed information on the treatment of outliers.
February 25, 1999
The packages eval.zip and acode.zip at John Irwin's FTP site have
been replaced by newer versions. The old versions (present on the server from
the start of February 1999 until February 25) suffered from the problem that
they contained two different versions of NEWFIT.FOR, one of which was out of
date.
February 11, 1999
The present web page ("ASTM Standard Practice: Overview of material") was
created; in parallel, at John Irwin's FTP site, the packages with ASTM tools were updated.
I.a., a new version of the
Kincaid data in EVAL.ZIP was made available where duplicate values were removed.
May 1998
Material concerning the ASTM procedure published on the web, accompanied by H.R.
Olesen's supplementary tools and notes.
Related links:
ASTM
notes: Additional information... |
Access to materials | Revised method compared to that of John Irwin. | Model Validation Kit
Home page of the "Harmonisation... Initiative
This page is maintained by Helge Rørdam Olesen
It was last modified on November 20, 2003.
Published by the Department
of Atmospheric Environment, National Environmental Research Institute (Denmark)