ISSS608 2018-19 T1 Assign Chia Yong Qing
Understanding Air Quality in Sofia
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Visual Analytics Individual Assignment
This wiki page is a deliverable for the module ISSS608 Visual Analytics.
Contents
Background
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. In this assignment, students are required to use visual analytics approach to reveal spatio-temporal patterns of air quality in Sofia City and to identify issues of concern.
Why is air pollution a concern?
Exposure to outdoor air pollution is associated with a broad spectrum of acute and chronic health effects ranging from irritant effects to death. New science also shows air pollution as an emerging risk factor for children’s health and even diabetes.
Sensitive and vulnerable groups such as pregnant women, children, the elderly and those already suffering from respiratory and other serious illnesses or from low income groups are particularly affected.
Air Pollution in Bulgaria
According to the European Environmental Agency, Sofia is the most polluted capital in Europe. With the third highest mortality rate (per 100.000 population)1 from air pollution in the world, after North Korea, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, WHO estimates that poor air quality costs the equivalent of 29.5% of Bulgaria’s GDP through reduced productivity and the costs to the country’s health services.
It is important to note that while the European Union set the limit of 25 μg/m3 as the maximum annual average for PM 2.5, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that PM2.5 should not exceed 10 μg/m3 as an annual average.
Despite so, Bulgaria is in almost constant breach of EU air quality laws aimed at protecting people’s health. In 2017, the EU Court of Justice ordered Bulgaria to take action to improve its air, stating that Bulgaria not only failed to meet the binding EU’s air quality standards, but also remained inactive in improving air quality.
We seek to understand the underlying factors resulting in the chronic poor air quality in Bulgaria. Specifically, we will be looking at Sofia City which is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria.
Task 1: Spatio-temporal Analysis of Official Air Quality
Characterize the past and most recent situation with respect to air quality measures in Sofia City. Highlight any trends of possible interest for investigation, including anomalies and how they affect our analysis.
Task 2: Spatio-temporal Analysis of Citizen Science Air Quality Measurements
Using appropriate data visualisation, characterize the sensors’ coverage, performance and operation. Students are required to answer if sensor's well distributed over the entire city? Are they all working properly at all times? And detect any unexpected behaviors of the sensors through analyzing the readings captured.
Task 3: Explore other factors affecting air quality in Sofia City
Urban air pollution is a complex issue with many factors affecting the air quality of a city.
In this third task, students are required to reveal the relationships between factors e.g. local energy sources, meteorology, topography, transboundary pollution and the air quality measure detected in Task 1 and Task 2.
Dataset
Four major data sets in zipped file format are provided for this assignment:
I. Official air quality measurements (EEA Data.zip)
ii. Citizen science air quality measurements (Air Tube.zip): temperature, humidity, pressure and topography
iii. Meteorological measurements (METEO-data.zip): Temperature, Humidity, Wind speed, Pressure, Rainfall, Visibility
iv. Topography data (TOPO-DATA)
Visualisation Tools
Tableau 10.5
JMP Pro
R
Reference
Puljic, V. M. (2014). Air Pollution and Health in Bulgaria. Brussels : Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL) .
Sofia Most Polluted Capital in Europe. (2016, Oct 7). Retrieved from Novinite: https://www.novinite.com/articles/176696/Sofia+Most+Polluted+Capital+in+Europe
