A comparative study on various statistical techniques predicting ozone concentrations: implications to environmental management

The objective of the present work is to compare various techniques for modeling the dependence of the tropospheric ozone concentrations on several meteorological and pollutant parameters. The study focuses on two different sites in the metropolitan area of Athens, Greece; one in the city centre and another one in the suburbs. It is found that although simple Linear Regression Analysis fails to construct accurate equations due to the existence of multicollinearity among the independent variables, still various combinations of a Multivariate Method (PCA) and Stepwise Regression Analysis manage to produce equations free of the multicollinearity issue. The derived formulas are validated and prove to have R2 values in the order of 0.8 approximately. However, the equations are found to be unsuccessful in case of severe episodes. For this reason, a new procedure is followed for estimating the ozone values in case of episodes exclusively. The new R2 value is estimated to be 0.9, approximately.

[1]  R. Burnett,et al.  Association between ozone and hospitalization for acute respiratory diseases in children less than 2 years of age. , 2001, American journal of epidemiology.

[2]  Andrew C. Comrie,et al.  Meteorologically adjusted urban air quality trends in the Southwestern United States , 2005 .

[3]  G. Kallos,et al.  Synoptic and mesoscale weather conditions during air pollution episodes in Athens, Greece , 1993 .

[4]  Panagiotis Papageorgas,et al.  Air mass exchange between the athens basin and the messogia plain of Attika, Greece , 1997 .

[5]  I. Koletsis,et al.  Seasonal variation of the temperature inversions over Athens, Greece , 2005 .

[6]  B. Katsoulis,et al.  An objective definition of air mass types affecting athens, greece; The corresponding atmospheric pressure patterns and air pollution levels , 2003, Environmental technology.

[7]  Saleh M. Al-Alawi,et al.  Principal component and multiple regression analysis in modelling of ground-level ozone and factors affecting its concentrations , 2005, Environ. Model. Softw..

[8]  Michael Brauer,et al.  Ozone personal exposures and health effects for selected groups residing in the Fraser Valley , 1997 .

[9]  Gabriel Ibarra-Berastegi,et al.  Regression and multilayer perceptron-based models to forecast hourly O3 and NO2 levels in the Bilbao area , 2006, Environ. Model. Softw..

[10]  Modeling of photochemical pollution in Athens, Greece. Application of the RAMS-CALGRID modeling system , 1993 .

[11]  I. Zurbenko,et al.  Moderating the Influence of Meteorological Conditions on Ambient Ozone Concentrations. , 1996, Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association.

[12]  D. Melas,et al.  Neural Network Model for Predicting Peak Photochemical Pollutant Levels , 2000, Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association.

[13]  Archontoula Chaloulakou,et al.  Comparative assessment of neural networks and regression models for forecasting summertime ozone in Athens. , 2003, The Science of the total environment.

[14]  Seung-Joon Yoon,et al.  Air Quality Indicators , 1998 .

[15]  V. Prybutok,et al.  A neural network model forecasting for prediction of daily maximum ozone concentration in an industrialized urban area. , 1996, Environmental pollution.

[16]  P. Kassomenos,et al.  Inland Propagation of Sea Breeze under Opposing Offshore Wind , 1999 .

[17]  Daniel S. Wilks,et al.  Statistical Methods in the Atmospheric Sciences: An Introduction , 1995 .

[18]  D Krewski,et al.  Association between ozone and hospitalization for respiratory diseases in 16 Canadian cities. , 1997, Environmental research.

[19]  H. Kambezidis,et al.  Smoke concentration levels in a monitoring network in Athens, Greece , 1986 .

[20]  Milt Statheropoulos,et al.  Principal component and canonical correlation analysis for examining air pollution and meteorological data , 1998 .

[21]  S. I. V. Sousa,et al.  Multiple linear regression and artificial neural networks based on principal components to predict ozone concentrations , 2007, Environ. Model. Softw..

[22]  P. Kassomenos,et al.  Assessment of the Air-Quality Over Urban Areas by Means of Biometeorological Indices. The Case of Athens, Greece , 2004, Environmental technology.

[23]  P. Kassomenos,et al.  Comparison of Air Pollutant Concentrations between Weekdays and Weekends in Athens, Greece for Various Meteorological Conditions , 2004, Environmental technology.

[24]  Andreas N. Skouloudis,et al.  “Air-quality indicators” for uniform indexing of atmospheric pollution over large metropolitan areas , 1999 .

[25]  I. Jolliffe.  Principal Component Analysis , 2002 .

[26]  Christophe Ambroise,et al.  Prediction of ozone peaks by mixture models , 2001 .

[27]  G. Soja,et al.  Ozone indices based on simple meteorological parameters: potentials and limitations of regression and neural network models , 1999 .

[28]  W. Briggs.  Statistical Methods in the Atmospheric Sciences , 2007 .

[29]  Fred M. Vukovich,et al.  An examination of the relationship between certain meteorological parameters and surface ozone variations in the Baltimore-Washington corridor , 2003 .

[30]  P. Guttorp,et al.  A review of statistical methods for the meteorological adjustment of tropospheric ozone , 2001 .

[31]  D. Metaxas,et al.  Factor Analysis of some climatological elements in Athens, 1931–1992: covariability and climatic change , 1995 .

[32]  J. L. Carrasco-Rodriguez,et al.  Effective 1-day ahead prediction of hourly surface ozone concentrations in eastern Spain using linear models and neural networks , 2002 .