Modeling air quality at urban scale in the city of Barcelona: A matter of green resolution

Improvement of the air quality in highly polluted cities is a challenge for today’s society. Many of the strategies that have been proposed for this purpose promote the creation of green infrastructures. The Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with chemistry (WRF-Chem) is used to analyze the behavior of the most common pollutants and how they are dispersed as a result of different meteorological conditions. To also consider the impact of including green infrastructures on urban morphology, the BEP/BEM (Building Effect Parameterization/Building Energy Model) multi-layer urban scheme is also included in the system. Using the city of Barcelona as a case study, this paper confirms that the modeling methodology used up to now needs to be reviewed for the design of green cities. Certain limitations of the WRF-Chem+BEP/BEM coupled model when applied in urban resolution are discussed, as well as the reasons for such limitations, being the main contribution of this paper to show that an alternative paradigm such as Machine Learning techniques should be considered to address this challenge.