Evidence for correlation between land use and PM10 hotspot explored by entropy weight

Abstract

According to recent studies on air pollution, air quality is deteriorating further because of PM10 arising from external factors such as yellow dust and vehicle exhaust gases flying from China and fossil fuel used for winter heating in China every yellow dust season, and internal factors such as traffic, industrial activities, etc. This has a bad effect on citizens’ healthy life by aggravating respiratory diseases and lowering pulmonary function. However, the location information about PM10 measurement currently provided by the Ministry of Environment is limited and insufficient to reflect the information of all areas. Thus, hotspot areas of PM10 concentration were derived by this study using spatial interpolation methods to estimate unmeasured points based on the measured data of urban air monitoring networks targeting Seoul city. As a result, high PM10 concentration was found centering largely on the southwestern area. Also, an analysis of the correlation with the areas by land use was conducted to identify the spatial characteristics of PM10 hotspot areas showing a spatial pattern of relatively high concentration. The result of the correlation analysis showed that there existed a positive correlation between industrial and residential areas and PM10 hotspot areas. This means that air pollution level varies according to spatial characteristics and that there exist areas to be preferentially managed according to land use status. This seems to be a ground to provide air pollution information by land use status at the time of policy decision making by region for urban planning and development.