ISSS608 2018-19 T1 Assign HyderAli Task 2 Insights
Air Pollution in Sofia City
|
|
|
|
|
The Citizen Science Air Quality dataset was utilized for the study of the measurement data by the citizens for both years 2017 and 2018. The dataset is historical P1/P2 data obtained from the citizens which include P1 and P2 together with observation data such as temperature, humidity and pressure. Upon consolidation of the Citizen Science Air Quality data, we proceed to decode the geohashes into latitude/longitude pairs resulting in 3,610,146 measurements.
Characterize the sensors' coverage, performance and operation. Are they well distributed over the entire city? Are they all working properly all the times? Can you detect any unexpected behaviours of the sensors through analyzing the readings they capture? Limit your response to no more than 4 images and 600 words.
Are the Air Quality sensors well-distributed over the entire city?
In the recent years, emergence of small-scale air quality sensors had led to a significant shift in the approach to measuring air quality beyond those afforded by traditional methods that use large, stationary and expensive analyzers. These sensors are usually small and portable, providing data in near real-time at relatively lower costs thus allowing air quality to be measured with unprecedented temporal and spatial resolution.
Heat map density plot of citizen measurement data across Bulgaria shows that most of the measurements only lie around the major cities/towns such as Sofia, Pernik, Blagoevgrad and Plovdiv between 2017 to 2018 with the highest concentration at Sofia.
Next, we proceed to spatially aggregate the point data into square regions by a binning size of approximately 11.1 km. It then becomes clearer that the citizen measurements are not evenly distributed, but mostly saturated around regions of higher population areas.
Do these sensors all work properly all the times? Is there any unexpected behaviors of the sensors through analyzing the readings they capture?
As these measurements were most likely recorded by local citizens/groups with their own testing kits, there is high possibility that the measurements may not be very accurate and thus not paint an accurate picture of pollution in Sofia City.
Part Two
Now turn your attention to the air pollution measurements themselves. Which part of the city shows relatively higher readings than others? Are these differences dependent? Limit your response to no more than 6 images and 800 words.
