Managing air quality by 'Data Mining'

Local air quality has taken on a higher importance in Europe with the introduction of mandatory limits from 2010. However, local air pollution problems can be subject to site-specific circumstances not always picked up by traditional modelling, especially in complex areas around large sources (e.g. motorways). The key to designing a successful ITS emissions reduction scheme is a detailed understanding of the site-specific problem to be addressed. Using work for the Highways Agency, this paper illustrates how a toolbox of statistical methods can be used to analyse local air quality problems.