The impact of sensor layout on Source Term Estimation in urban neighborhood

The layout of sensors in urban neighborhood has a great impact on the Source Term Estimation (STE) of dangerous or polluting gas leak sources. In this study, the effect of sensor layout on STE performance is analyzed using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) approaches, and the best layout of sensors in the urban neighborhood is determined. The influence of source location and the border effect of measuring points on the performance of STE are analyzed. Results show that placing average two sensors around each building is the best sensor configuration for identifying source location parameters. Regarding the source intensity, no sensor configuration with obvious advantages has been observed. As the distance between pollutants and the city increases, the difficulty of STE increases. The result of STE is slightly more accurate and the posterior distribution is more concentrated after considering the border effect of measuring point.