ISSS608 2018-19 T1 Assign Wong Yam Yip
What's Suffocating Sofia?
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Background
4.2 million deaths result from exposure to ambient air pollution and over 80% of urban residence are exposed to air pollution exceeding WHO standards globally. Air pollution is also known to be the cause for other health risk like stroke, heart and lung diseases. 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).
Data and Analysis
This Wiki page serves to present analytical insights and findings of spatio-temporal patterns of air quality in Sofia City and to identify issues of concern with an visual analytics approac. We will be using 4 provide datasets, which provides information on official and civilian air pollution stations/sensors and their readings, as well as, other details related to meteorology and topology readings of Sofia city. In the course of this analysis, we will explore possible sources of pollution from local or external sources. This analysis is split into 3 tasks:
Task 1
In this task, the air pollution readings from 6 official air stations will be analysed. Using various methods of data visualization, the history of part PM10 concentration readings in Sofia will be compared with the present readings. The concentrations readings will also be compared across different stations with respective to the air station type. Furthermore, we shall also look at the concentrations of a typical month, week and day, and challenges faced while analysing this dataset will be explained.
Task 2
For Task 2, the air pollution readings by civilian sensors will be put up for analysis. Through data visualization, we will see how PM10 and PM2.5 pollution is spread though the city of Sofia. The coverage, operatability and reliability of readings from these civilian sensor will also be looked into. As comparison, we shall also explore the distribution of pollution over time, as well as, the correlation between the pollution and other civilian sensor readings.
Task 3
In Task 3, we focus on finding the possible causes of air pollution of Sofia city. Some factors including location of local and external energy sources, relationship between air pollution and meteorology environmental elements, as well as, geographical topology of Sofia City will be explored.
References
This analysis report is based on this assignment
Banner image credit to: MarcusObal
