IS428 AY2018-19T1 Ng Wei En
To be a Visual Detective
Contents
Preamble
Air pollution is an important risk factor for health in Europe and worldwide. A recent review of the global burden of disease showed that it is one of the top ten risk factors for health globally. Worldwide an estimated 7 million people died prematurely because of pollution; in the European Union (EU) 400,000 people suffer a premature death. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) predicts that in 2050 outdoor air pollution will be the top cause of environmentally related deaths worldwide. In addition, air pollution has also been classified as the leading environmental cause of cancer.
Air quality in Bulgaria is a big concern: measurements show that citizens all over the country breathe in air that is considered harmful to health. For example, concentrations of PM2.5 and PM10 are much higher than what the EU and the World Health Organization (WHO) have set to protect health.
Bulgaria had the highest PM2.5 concentrations of all EU-28 member states in urban areas over a three-year average. For PM10, Bulgaria is also leading on the top polluted countries with 77 μg/m3on the daily mean concentration (EU limit value is 50 μg/m3).
According to the WHO, 60 percent of the urban population in Bulgaria is exposed to dangerous (unhealthy) levels of particulate matter (PM10).
Problem & Motivation
Measurements of airborne particulate matter(PM) can be divided into PM2.5 and PM10. PM2.5 and PM10 refers to airborne particulate matter that have a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometres and 10 micrometres respectively.
It is without a doubt that the poor air quality Bulgaria is a great cause for concern, with measurements of PM2.5 and PM10 collected from air quality stations indicating that they are at much higher levels above the thresholds stipulated by the EU and World Health Organisation(WHO) to protect health.
Bulgaria had the highest PM2.5 concentrations of all EU-28 member states in urban areas over a three-year average. For PM10, Bulgaria is also leading on the top polluted countries with 77 μg/m3on the daily mean concentration (EU limit value is 50 μg/m3).
With the huge amount of data collected from air quality monitoring systems and weather stations all across Bulgaria including Sofia City, there is a need to make sense of these data by building an interactive data visualisation tool to better identify the patterns and trends in measurements collected over a period of time. This is crucial in helping identify the distribution of air pollution in Bulgaria and the tracking down the main sources of air pollution which contribute to the worsening air quality. It would be useful to find out correlation between air quality and other metrological data such as temperature, humidity as well as topographical data like elevation.
With such a huge amount of dataset, there is a pressing need to further investigate the source of air pollution, any noticeable patterns or trends in air quality as well as uncover the possible causes relating to metreologoy or topography.
