This talk by Johanna Einsiedler from Graz Technical University will take place online from 15:00-16:00 (CEST/UTC+2) on September 17, 2020. If you are interested in participating, you can join here via Zoom.
Title: Estimating the Impact of COVID-19 on Air Pollution with Interpretable Predictive Models
Abstract:
Air Pollution is a major threat to public health in the 21st century. Recent evidence also suggests a link between the susceptibility of individuals to COVID-19 and previous exposure to high levels of air pollution. In order for national and city governments to be able to actively manage air quality, more evidence on the impact of traffic on air pollution levels is needed. COVID-19 offers a unique opportunity to gather insights on this topic. As air pollution levels are highly dependent on weather circumstances, we have fitted a Generalized Additive Model to predict NO2, PM and O3 values based on weather variables such as temperature, wind speed, precipitation etc. This Model is trained on historic data and subsequently used to predict the concentrations over the social distancing periods in the examined cities in China, Austria and Switzerland. Further, the relationship of the change in air quality to estimates of traffic reduction is investigated and differences between cities are analyzed.