Small Models for Big Problems: Appropriate Solutions for Better Management of Air Resources

Environmental problems such as air pollution are increasing in the developing world. There is weak institutional capacity to address the issue in an integrated manner. There is usually little in the way of an organized knowledge base or development or application of analytical tools that may help support decision making in this regard. This paper proposes to introduce a simple modeling tool that can be used to organize and conduct first-order analysis of crucial information for management of these resources, especially in environments that are constrained by data and institutional capacity.

Tools for optimization, simulation and sensitivity analysis will also be demonstrated to help assist in decision making and in determining the value of additional information. The potential for the use of such tools to improve environmental assessments, project component design to better target desired goals and as awareness building and shared vision planning among multi-sectoral stakeholders will be explored. A simple interactive modeling (SIM) framework for air quality management will be presented to help stakeholders in developing world cities to address air quality problems in a holistic manner. It provides an integrated framework to analyze information about different pollutant sources distributed spatially, their effect on ambient levels, their impact on populations exposed, the resulting health impacts and different types of valuation of these impacts. The determination of co-benefits to illustrate local-global synergy's will also be illustrated.