IS428 AY2018-19T1 Lau Zi Quan

To be a Visual Detective

Overview

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).

Dataset Analysis & Transformation Process

Sofia Dataset

Four major data sets in zipped file format are provided. They can be download by click on this link.

• Official air quality measurements (5 stations in the city)(EEA Data.zip) – as per EU guidelines on air quality monitoring see the data description HERE…
• Citizen science air quality measurements (Air Tube.zip) , incl. temperature, humidity and pressure (many stations) and topography (gridded data).
• Meteorological measurements (1 station)(METEO-data.zip): Temperature; Humidity; Wind speed; Pressure; Rainfall; Visibility
• Topography data (TOPO-DATA)

Dataset	Data Attributes	Rationale Of Usage
EEA Data.zip		Official air quality measurements (5 stations in the city) There is a Metadata.xlsx file which contains information of stations. There are a total of 6 Stations. Druzhba, Hipodruma, IAOS/Pavlovo and Nadezhda have data from 2013 to 2018 Mladost only has data in 2018, it may be the replacement the station of OrlovMost which only have data from 2013 to 2015. All data from EEA are validated, valid and verified.
Air Tube.zip		Citizen science air quality measurements Because of the information and coverage by official air measurements data are limited, Crowdsourcing from the citizens to gather data are important. These sensors are deployed all over Bulgaria across the year 2017 to 2018. Data from AirTube are expected to be noisy and requires cleaning and verification.
METEO-data.zip		Data collected by Meteorological measurements There are a total of 2449 records in this dataset. This data is collected at Sofia Airport and is measured at a standard 2-meter height. Pressure data is adjusted to sea-level. Data have undergone QA and should be without error.