Estimation of the amount of asbestos-cement roofing in Poland

The unique set of physical and chemical properties has led to many industrial applications of asbestos worldwide; one of them was roof covering. Asbestos is harmful to human health, and therefore its use was legally forbidden. Since in Poland there is no adequate data on the amount of asbestos-cement roofing, the objective of this study was to estimate its quantity on the basis of physical inventory taking with the use of aerial imagery, and the application of selected statistical features. Data pre-processing and analysis was executed in R Statistical Environment v. 3.1.0. Best random forest models were computed; model explaining 72.9% of the variance was subsequently used to prepare the prediction map of the amount of asbestos-cement roofing in Poland. Variables defining the number of farms, number and age of buildings, and regional differences were crucial for the analysis. The total amount of asbestos roofing in Poland was estimated at 738,068,000 m2 (8.2m t). It is crucial for the landfill development programme, financial resources distribution, and application of monitoring policies.