The
parameters associated to a environmental dispersion model may include
different kinds of variability, imprecision and uncertainty. More often,
it is seen that available information is interpreted in probabilistic
sense. Probability theory is a well established theory to measure such
kind of variability. However, not all available information, data or
model parameters affected by variability, imprecision and uncertainty,
can be handled by traditional probability theory. Uncertainty or
imprecision may occur due to incomplete information or data, measurement
error or data obtained from expert judgement or subjective
interpretation of available data or information. Thus for model
parameters, data may be affected by subjective uncertainty. Traditional
probability theory is inappropriate to represent subjective uncertainty.
Possibility theory is used as a tool to describe parameters with
insufficient knowledge. Based on the polynomial chaos expansion,
stochastic response surface method has been utilized in this article for
the uncertainty propagation of atmospheric dispersion model under
consideration of both probabilistic and possibility information. The
proposed method has been demonstrated through a hypothetical case study
of atmospheric dispersion.