Weather and the City: Machine Learning for Predicting and Attributing Fine Scale Air Quality to Meteorological and Urban Determinants
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-9-2024
Abstract
Urban air quality persists as a global concern, with critical health implications. This study employs a combination of machine learning (gradient boosting regression, GBR) and spatial analysis to better understand the key drivers behind air pollution and its prediction and mitigation strategies. Focusing on New York City as a representative urban area, we investigate the interplay between urban characteristics and weather factors, showing that urban features, including traffic-related parameters and urban morphology, emerge as crucial predictors for pollutants closely associated with vehicular emissions, such as elemental carbon (EC) and nitrogen oxides (NOx). Conversely, pollutants with secondary formation pathways (e.g., PM2.5) or stemming from nontraffic sources (e.g., sulfur dioxide, SO2) are predominantly influenced by meteorological conditions, particularly wind speed and maximum daily temperature. Urban characteristics are shown to act over spatial scales of 500 × 500 m2, which is thus the footprint needed to effectively capture the impact of urban form, fabric, and function. Our spatial predictive model, needing only meteorological and urban inputs, achieves promising results with mean absolute errors ranging from 8 to 32% when using full-year data. Our approach also yields good performance when applied to the temporal mapping of spatial pollutant variability. Our findings highlight the interacting roles of urban characteristics and weather conditions and can inform urban planning, design, and policy.
Identifier
85188740087 (Scopus)
Publication Title
Environmental Science and Technology
External Full Text Location
https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.4c00783
e-ISSN
15205851
ISSN
0013936X
PubMed ID
38529628
First Page
6313
Last Page
6325
Issue
14
Volume
58
Grant
W911NF2010216
Fund Ref
Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology
Recommended Citation
Gerges, Firas; Llaguno-Munitxa, Maider; Zondlo, Mark A.; Boufadel, Michel C.; and Bou-Zeid, Elie, "Weather and the City: Machine Learning for Predicting and Attributing Fine Scale Air Quality to Meteorological and Urban Determinants" (2024). Faculty Publications. 506.
https://digitalcommons.njit.edu/fac_pubs/506
