Abstract
The paper analyzes the influence of meteorological conditions (air temperature, wind speed, humidity, visibility) and anthropogenic factors (population in cities and in rural areas, road length, number of vehicles, emission of dusts and gases, coal consumption in industrial plants, number of air purification devices installed in industrial plants) on the concentration of PM2.5 and PM10 dusts in the air in the region of Kielce city in Poland. Spearman correlation coefficient was used to evaluate the relationship between the mentioned independent variables and air quality indicators. The calculated values of the correlation coefficient showed statistically significant relationships between air quality and the amount of installed air purification equipment in industrial plants. A statistically significant effect of the population in rural settlement units on the increase in air concentrations of PM2.5 and PM10 was also found, which proves the influence of the so-called low emission of pollutants on the air quality in the studied region. The analyses also revealed a statistically significant effect of road length on the decrease in PM2.5 and PM10 air content. This result indicates that a decrease in traffic intensity on particular road sections leads to an improvement in air quality. The analyses showed that despite the progressing anthropopression in the Kielce city region the air quality with respect to PM2.5 and PM10 content is improving. To verify the results obtained from statistical calculations, parametric models were also determined to predict PM2.5 and PM10 concentrations in the air, using the methods of Random Forests (RF), Boosted Trees (BT) and Support Vector Machines (SVM) for comparison purposes. The modelling results confirmed the conclusions that had been made based on previous statistical calculations.
Highlights
A major problem of growing urban agglomerations is the deterioration of air quality [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
In order to assess the influence of selected variables on the air content of PM2.5 and PM10 particulate matter, the correlation matrix between these variables was determined using the STATISTICA software
The paper presents the results of research on the influence of meteorological and anthropogenic factors, i.e., caused by human activity, on the atmospheric pollution with PM2.5 and PM10 particles, which are harmful to human health
Summary
A major problem of growing urban agglomerations is the deterioration of air quality [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. Taking into account the above considerations and the need to improve the accuracy of air quality modelling, the paper analyses in detail the influence of meteorological, anthropogenic and local development factors on the change in the dynamics of PM2.5 and PM10 air pollution on the example of the Polish city Kielce, having data for calculations from the years 2010-2015. On the basis of the annual Reports on the State of the Environment from 2010-2016 in Poland [40], relevant data from the national Central Statistical Office [41] (population, coal consumption, number of rural settlements in the region), meteorological conditions, information on ongoing programs to improve air quality, a statistical analysis was performed to determine the impact of the abovementioned factors on the air content of PM2.5 and PM10. The modelling results obtained were used to verify the conclusions that had been made based on previous statistical calculations
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