Environmental Impact of Road Traffic-Related Air Pollution. A Case Study in Sahloul District—Sousse (Tunisia)

This work aims to simulate the road traffic pollutants dispersion in a high-traffic area located at Sahloul-Sousse (Tunisia). Estimating road emission rates was performed by COPEERT V software. While dispersion simulation was performed by SIRANE software, this tool is crucial for simulating the transport of pollutants within and above the urban canopy over a significant number of streets. Input data are traffic emission rates, meteorological parameters, and building configuration data from QGIS software, background concentrations, as well as a list of other factors such as latitude, albedo, etc. The official Journal of the Tunisian Republic reports that the daily average threshold for carbon monoxide (CO) and particulate matter (PM), are respectively around 50 µg/m3 and 10 mg/m3 http://decrets-pollution-18-mai-2018.pdf/ . The main output results show that the hourly CO and PM concentrations are relatively higher close to the Sahloul hospital and the car station, with maximal concentrations around 209 µg/m3 and 26 µg/m3 respectively.