ASSESSMENT OF AIR QUALITY USING URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE

Abstract

One of the world's largest environmental health threat is air pollution which leads to 7 million deaths round the world once a year. This project aim to provide a detailed analysis on air pollution using urban infrastructure. The project is designed with the objectives to (i) Mapping spatial distribution of atmospheric optical thickness using VIIRS - Suomi-National Polar-orbiting Partnership data. (ii) Using GIS techniques to identify urban features such as plants, parks, built structures etc. And map their spatial relationship with observed AOT. (iii) Using MCDA for identification of high load monitoring sites for atmospheric pollution (iv) Design and development of a field data collection component for AOT using Arduino and small sensors. (v) Data management and retrieval through an online dashboard for mass awareness. The study area for the project is Lahore (31.5204°N, 74.3587°£). Lahore is the second largest city of Pakistan and the most polluted city in the country having 157 US AQI. "Gard-o-Ghubar" is a platform and device which is designed to help people in monitoring the quality of air in the form of web dashboard. The system includes local sensors for microscopic measurements while spatial datasets were acquired from VIIRS - SuomiNational Polar-orbiting Partnership data, are subjugated to monitor AOT macroscopically showing high and low areas of the air pollution. The seasonal analysis was done to classify the air pollution distribution in Lahore. After combining all the factors and giving them weights, seasonal and classified maps of air pollution were obtained. Areas which are mostly affected by air pollution is the urban area of Lahore as it is due to domestic fuel burning, natural dust and source, traffic and industrial activities. The general trend of AOT in Lahore is that the value of AOT increases in winters as the highest value is in December i.e 4.7, and it is lowest in spring which is minimum of 0.2. Active Fire events only contribute 16% to the total air pollution that is the reason these zones are in the classification of low air pollution. After the detailed analysis, the most polluted areas in Lahore include Urdu Bazaar, Railway Station, Gawal Mandi, Anarkali, Chah Miran, G.P.O, Misri shahis with a total area of 9.679 km square. An effort has been made to bring down the cost of this sophistication to the end user enabling not only larger economic output but also embedding different techniques and ideas for better decision-making using GIS.