Air pollution forecast in Europe
Zelenaia, Liubov (2023)
Zelenaia, Liubov
2023
All rights reserved. This publication is copyrighted. You may download, display and print it for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2023051510808
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2023051510808
Tiivistelmä
According to the European Environment Agency air pollution is the greatest environmental health risk in Europe. Wherever the person lives, it is difficult to avoid. Air pollution may severely impact the environment and health. Despite recent improvements in the region's air quality the levels of air pollutants in Europe continue to exceed both the strictest World Health Organization recommen- dations and European Union requirements.
Several questions were considered during the thesis research such as how much excess pollutants there are in the air, what is the cause of such pollution, and how it will evolve in the future. The study focused on the European region. The main work was done by gathering needed data and predicting factors and pollutant levels in the next ten years based on retrospective data.
Thousands of stations around Europe monitor air quality following the concentration of various pol- lutants. The stations report data to several databases of different organizations yearly. The re- search was based on open-source data from 1969 to 2022, which allowed accurate and efficient detection of air quality anomalies. The data were pre-processed for better performance and used for the forecast with Python language tools such as LinearRegression and MLPRegressor of the scikit-learn package. The models were evaluated using the R2 score for testing and training data. The thesis also provided a visual representation of the gathered and predicted data in graphs and tables.
The predicted most probable levels of six air pollutants were compared with the Year Average Common Air Quality Index (YACAQI) of these pollutants. The models of the predictions were ac- curate by more than 80% and stable in different scenarios which makes them reliable as a founda- tion for further research.
The thesis work found that most air pollutant levels are predicted to decrease in the next ten years, with only ozone levels going to increase. The main air pollution factors are GDP per capita and fossil fuel consumption such as oil, gas, and coal. Oil and coal consumption are predicted to de- crease, while gas consumption will increase to the level of oil consumption. Despite that, the levels of pollutants will be still below the year average which will not affect citizens' health.
Several questions were considered during the thesis research such as how much excess pollutants there are in the air, what is the cause of such pollution, and how it will evolve in the future. The study focused on the European region. The main work was done by gathering needed data and predicting factors and pollutant levels in the next ten years based on retrospective data.
Thousands of stations around Europe monitor air quality following the concentration of various pol- lutants. The stations report data to several databases of different organizations yearly. The re- search was based on open-source data from 1969 to 2022, which allowed accurate and efficient detection of air quality anomalies. The data were pre-processed for better performance and used for the forecast with Python language tools such as LinearRegression and MLPRegressor of the scikit-learn package. The models were evaluated using the R2 score for testing and training data. The thesis also provided a visual representation of the gathered and predicted data in graphs and tables.
The predicted most probable levels of six air pollutants were compared with the Year Average Common Air Quality Index (YACAQI) of these pollutants. The models of the predictions were ac- curate by more than 80% and stable in different scenarios which makes them reliable as a founda- tion for further research.
The thesis work found that most air pollutant levels are predicted to decrease in the next ten years, with only ozone levels going to increase. The main air pollution factors are GDP per capita and fossil fuel consumption such as oil, gas, and coal. Oil and coal consumption are predicted to de- crease, while gas consumption will increase to the level of oil consumption. Despite that, the levels of pollutants will be still below the year average which will not affect citizens' health.