The impact of MCO (Movement Control Order) towards air quality in selected cities in Malaysia

Abstract

In December 2019, the outbreak of Covid-19 does cause a lot of serious issues, fatality, economic crisis, the rise of the unemployment rate, air pollution, and so on. This paper focuses on the impact of Covid-19 that relates to the long-lasting issue of air quality. The scope of this study is focused on the changing of air quality that occurred within the Movement Control Order (MCO) which was launched by the Malaysian government against Covid-19 spreading in Malaysia. Multiple reports suggest during the MCO period, the overall air quality in Malaysia was improved. However, when we just look into the history of air quality index (AQI) value without doing any further analysis, we can see there is no significant difference between the AQI value since the MCO was executed. Therefore, we need to understand how AQI value is obtained and compare available data before MCO is launched to the first three phases of MCO. This paper estimates the impact of MCO towards reduction of moving vehicles which can give impact to air quality in terms of 24-hours PM2.5 concentrations. Air quality index data have been analyzed by developed code using MATLAB. From the investigating and analyzing the data conducted, we found out the impact of MCO on the air quality in Malaysia is positive.