According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 92% of the world’s population breathes air that exceeds its own guideline limits. Industry, transport systems, power generation and waste incineration cause particularly high levels of air pollutants, forming a threat to health and climate.
Pollutants increase the risk of getting respiratory and certain heart diseases, lung cancer, pneumonia and strokes. Furthermore, they worsen the physical condition of patients with e.g. asthma, bronchitis or Covid 19. Mostly, children, elders and outdoor workers are impacted by health-damaging factors like PM 2.5. The WHO estimates that 7 million people are killed worldwide yearly due to outdoor as well as household air pollution.
Regarding the climate, pollutants are linked to the earth’s climate and ecosystems globally as major drivers of air pollutants like combustion of fossil fuel cause greenhouse gas emissions.
Additionally, Sulphur (SO2) and Nitrogen Oxides (NOx) emissions directly affect the ecosystem’s ability to function and grow. These emissions are deposited in water, on vegetation and on soils as “acid rain”, harming the flora and fauna.
But most people are unaware of the air quality they breathe and how to act accordingly to reduce their health risk and influence the quality by actions.
In our project we evaluated and plotted the concentration of selected pollutants (converted to the Air Quality Index (AQI)) in several cities. Followed by analysing the impact of Covid19 measures on the AQI by comparison to 2018 and 2019 in order to prove that citizens and local governments can contribute to create a better urban air quality. Afterwards we implemented machine learning algorithms (SARIMAX and Random Forest model) to predict the AQI of the health-damaging pollutants PM10 and PM2.5 by using time as the basis for the SARIMAX calculations and weather variables for the Random Forest model. With the algorithms we were able to create a predictor, showing the expected daily AQI with an interpretation and recommendations on how to contribute to create a better quality in order to minimize the health risk due to air pollution.