Air pollution is a major concern in many urban areas around the world. Human health is affected noticeably as while the air quality (AQ) of cities is decreasing, the risk of stroke, heart disease, lung cancer, and chronic and acute respiratory diseases, including asthma, increases for the people who live in them (WHO, 2018). The World Health Organization (WHO), that works with countries and cities to monitor air pollution and improve AQ, reports that 4.2 million people die every year as a result of exposure to ambient (outdoor) air pollution, while 91% of the world’s population lives in places where AQ exceeds WHO guideline limits (WHO, 2020). The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has identified six “criteria pollutants” as pollutants of concern because of their impacts on health and the environment: ozone (O3), particulate matter (PM), carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulphur dioxide (SO2), and lead (Pb) (Williams et al., 2014). The increased traffic volume has been reported as one of the most significant causes of ambient air pollution in 20 European cities (Gulia et al., 2015). The concentration of air pollutants is highly location-dependent and traffic junctions, urban canyons, industrial installations and topological structure can have an extensive effect on local air pollution (Vardoulakis et al., 2003).
Therefore, it is seen that specific measures need to be taken to maintain an acceptable level of ambient AQ. These actions can be summarized as an Urban Air Quality Management Plan (UAQMP). As reported in (Gulia et al., 2015), the basic components of an UAQMP are i) air quality objectives, ii) monitoring, iii) emission inventory, iv) prediction and forecasting tools, v) control strategies and vi) public participation.
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