ISSS608 2018-19 T1 Assign Goh I Vy

ISSS608 Visual Analytics and Applications Assignment 1: Suffocating Sofia

Overview

Task 1

Task 2

Task 3

Conclusion

Спаси София ! Spasi Sofia! Save Sofia!

On Sunday, 7th January 2018, 08:32am, The Sofia Globe reported, “In Sofia’s Obelya residential district, the PM₁₀ concentration was 632µg/m³ this morning, which is about 30 times the value which would lead to a pollution alarm in a country like Austria". It was reported that in spite of the fact there was not that much traffic, the air quality was bad on 6th January 2018. [1]

Hriso Iliev in Hanibal Lecter mask

How are the resident of Sofia handling these environment condition in Sofia? One Sofia resident who manages the NGO Spasi Sofia, was spotted with a Hannibal Lecter breathing mask. “I also ordered an air filtration apparatus for home and another for the car. I guess I am supposed to live like fish in an aquarium now, so that I can breathe normally.” said Iliev.

What is going on in Sofia?

Background

According to Unmask My City, an organization who are dedicated to improving the health of patients and communities, Sofia’s air pollution level remainds one of the highest in European cities. 97.2% of Bulgarians are exposed to harmful levels of particulate matter PM10 throughout the year. Air pollution is now responsible for over 6.5 million premature deaths per year. Exposing people to harmful levels of air pollution increases the risks of heart disease, lung cancer, respiratory diseases and stroke.

What is Particulate Matter?

Particulate Matter are throasic and respirable particles, inhalable coarse particles. There are two categories of particle size. PM₁₀ are coarse particles with a diameter between 2.5 and 10µm, PM_2.5 are fine particles with a diameter of 2.5µm or less.

These particles are released from variety of sources, both indoor and outdoor. PM₁₀ source could be soot, dust, pollen, mould etc. PM₁₀ are inhalable. PM_2.5 source could be combustion particles, organic compounds, metal, etc. PM_2.5are respirable. Inhalable particulate fraction is that fraction of a dust cloud that can be breathed into the nose or mouth. Respirable particulate fraction is that fraction of inhaled airborne particles that can penetrate beyond the terminal bronchioles into the gas-exchange region of the lungs. [2]

Data Preparation

Four major sets of data were provided.

Data Set	Data Preparation
Official Air Quality Measurements	The dataset consists of air quality measurements consolidated from 5 official Air Monitoring Station per year. The dataset were concatenate to combine all the individual Air Monitoring Station for each year into a single dataset. The metadata was then joined into the combined dataset to retrieve information such as the common name of the Air Monitoring Station, its longtitude and latitude. JMP Pro was used to facilitate in this data preparation.
Citizen Science Air Quality Measurement	The citizen science dataset consists of geohash, which depicted the location of air monitoring sensors installed by the citizen of Sofia. R Language, geohash package was used to decode the geohash into Longitude and Latitude. JMP Pro was used to concatenate the 2017 and 2018 dataset into a single dataset.
Metrological Measurement	The dataset consists of the metrological data such as temperature, dew point temperature, pressure and humidity from 2012 to 2018. Microsoft Excel was used to append the "Year", "Month" and "Day" column into a single "Date" column to standardise with the other dataset.
Topography Data	The dataset consists of longtitude, latitude and altitude information. No additional data preparation was done on this dataset.

Visualisation Software

The following software was used for data preparation and data visualization and analysis:

• Tableau

Banner image credit to: AFP News Agency