Predicting Within-City Variations in Ultrafine Particle and Black Carbon Concentrations in Bucaramanga, Columbia Using Open Source Data and Images

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BACKGROUND AND AIM: Outdoor ultrafine particles (UFP; 100 nm) and black carbon (BC) vary greatly within cities and may have adverse impacts on human health such as cardiovascular mortality and brain tumour incidence. Traditional regression methods for estimating spatial distributions of ambient air pollution depend on extensive, curated geospatial information system databases. This has resulted in a disparity wherein little is known about local air pollution in the data-sparse settings of low- and middle- income countries. We used a hybrid approach to develop new models to estimate within-city spatial variations in outdoor UFP and BC concentrations across Bucaramanga, Colombia. METHODS: We conducted a large-scale mobile monitoring campaign over twenty days in 2019. Land use regression (LUR) models were developed using land use parameters from curated and open-source databases. Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) models were developed using Google Maps satellite view and street view images. Combined models were developed by combining predictions from the LUR and CNN models. After training in the training and validation sets, predictions were generated in the test set and compared to measured values. RESULTS:The combined UFP model (R2=0.54) outperformed the CNN (R2=0.47) and land use regression (LUR) models (R2=0.47) on their own. Similarly, the combined BC model also outperformed the CNN and LUR BC models (R2 = 0.51 vs 0.43 and 0.45 respectively). Spatial variations in model performance were more stable for the CNN and combined models compared to the LUR models suggesting that the combined approach may be less likely to contribute to differential exposure measurement error in epidemiological studies. CONCLUSIONS:Estimates from these models can then be applied to population-based cohorts in order to evaluate population health risks. Additionally, our findings demonstrated that satellite and street-level images can be combined with a traditional LUR modelling approach to improve predictions of within-city spatial variations in outdoor UFP and BC concentrations. KEYWORDS: Ultrafine particles, Black Carbon, Deep learning, Images, Land use regression