Study of air contaminants concentration in Castelln, Spain.

Rubio Soliva, Dbora

HIGHLIGHTS
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It is necessary to explore different air contamination areas.

GIS techniques gives us a better perspective of the problem.

Nowadays people are not aware of the contamination amount in the air.

Controlling an area, it is posible to detect a big pollution concentration.

ABSTRACT
The presence of contaminants in the air causes a serious risk for citizens, specifically in
some areas where there are lots of focuses, as industries or chemical factories. This
project determines different atmospheric contaminants in Castelln. The information
will be collected from areas whose centers placed in specific points (stations that are
constantly analyzing and recording the specific contaminants emitted to the air). These
data will generate various interpolation maps, each one depending on a specific air
contaminant, working with a GIS programme and creating a database. The interpolation
methods such as Inverse Distance Weighted (IDW) and Kriging were tested to develop
air quality model. The interpolated and corresponding measured values compared by
three different statistical test, such as Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Root Mean Square
Error (RMSE) and Index of Agreement (d). The objectives were to establish a
relationship between industries and air contamination, to see how this may affect the
nearest populations.
Keywords:

GIS, air contamination, contaminants, urban area, air pollution,

interpolation.

1. Introduction
Today in many countries there are elevated air pollution levels, specially in those who
are developed, as for example Europe. In particular in urban areas, where there is a
bigger centralization of industries and car traffic, both emitters of air contaminants.
Industrial activity can origin an atmospheric substance introduction, causing harmful
effects on human health or environment. The industrial emissions of atmospheric
contaminants can be channeled (pollution emerges from a chimney) and diffused (every

non channeled emission from industries, for example emissions which escape through a
window or a door during a process. Industries must control both channeled and diffuse
emisions to reach an appropiate air quality and to avoid its harmful effects on the
environment. The main atmospheric contaminants emitted are the following: Carbon
Monoxide (CO), Carbon Dioxide (CO2), solid particles, Nitrogen Dioxides (NO2),
Nitrogen Oxides (NOx), Sulphur Dioxide (SO2), Hydrocarbons (HxCy). Additionally
there is a risk associated with the cited contaminants, due to chemical and physical
transformations, giving rise to secondary contaminants O3 (Ozone), causing problems
in human health and natural ecosystems.
Air quality sampling at all the desired location is practically difficult but it is necessary
to have suitable interpolation method to predict data for whole area of interest.
Interpolation aims to predict values of un-sampled location based on the sampled data
over the whole area, which typically results in images or maps. Interpolation is one of
the most successful tool in modeling spatial changes of environmental system
(Goodchild, 1993). The ecological, land evaluation, agriculture, water quality and
climatic modeling are very important modeling work carried out in the latest past. Apart
from that, air pollution interpolation models have also been discussed (Ross et al., 2007;
Arain et al., 2007; Denby et al., 2005) to demonstrate the capability of GIS in air quality
monitoring and management. In this research, objectives of the study were to run and
compare interpolation methods such as Inverse Distance Weighted (IDW) and Kriging.
An evaluation was made to find out the interpolation method suitability for air quality
parameters using different statistical methods.
The basic structure of the project will consist in the methodology followed; seven
parameters that measure air quality will be explained; after collecting data from the web
network, using ArcMap software, where a satellite image and the administrative
boundary of Castelln (the study area) can be implemented; after that the points where
each station is permanently recording coordinates are established. At each of these
points, the registered pollutants data are added. Afterwards, using two interpolation
methods in ArcMap, IDW and Kriging, according to certain variables, it is possible to
compare the different contamination concentration. The result will be one map for each
contaminant using both interpolation methods. That will allow us to decide the best
method (or the most appropriate for this specific study) and then analyze what the

results means and where there is more concentration of each pollutant. Finally, the
results are discussed and a general appreciation focused on this research.

2. Methodology
2.1. Study area
The spatial distribution of air quality analysed was studied in Castelln (area about
108,8 ! ) using GIS tool. Castelln is a province in the northen part of the
Comunidad Valenciana, Spain. The province has a population of 604, 564.

Fig. 1. Map of Castelln (Comunidad Valenciana)

Data will be collected from 17 points (stations), distributed in a uniform manner

throughout the province. The following figure shows each station name.

Fig. 2. Map of permanent stations placed in the studied area

2.2. Pollution from non-biological sources

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Carbon monoxide (CO)

Carbon monoxide is a toxic odourless gas produced by the incomplete combustin of

fuel (IEH, 1996).Water heaters, gas or coal heaters and gas stoves are indoor sources of
CO. High levels of CO can result from the outdoor vehicles into the ventilation system
of a building, for example. In addition, tobacco smoking is an important source of CO
pollution. In absence of emission sources, concentrations of CO in indoor environments
are lower than outdoors.
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Nitrogen dioxide (! )

Nitrogen dioxide is a wter-soluble red to Brown gas with a pungent acrid odour. It is
formed from the combination of nitrogen and oxygen during combustion at high
temperaturas (Maroni et al., 1995). As a consequence, the production of NO2 is
associated with the operation of gas appliances, wood-burning and also cigerettes.
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Sulphur dioxide (! )

Sulphur dioxide is produced by the oxidation of sulphur impurities during the burning
of coal and other fuels that contain sulphur (Burr, 1997). It is a colourless gas with a
strong odour that can be detected. It is soluble in water and can be oxidised within

airborne water droplets. Levels of this contaminant are generally lower indoors than
outdoors.
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Ozone (! )

Ozone is produced by photochemical reactions. It is a reactive gas that tend to occur at

lower concentrations indoors than outdoors.

2.3. Method
The preliminary stage of this project is based on collecting data, in this case this data are
observations from August 2013 to August 2014. Data are provided by the Red
Valenciana de Vigilancia y Control de la Contaminacin Atmosfrica, a control
network which provide continuous monitoring of the different atmospheric
contamination levels. This network has a number of points (shown in Fig.1), in where
fixed stations are placed (sensors) to measure the principal concentration parameters.
Parameters information offered by this network are:
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CO, SO2, NO, NO2, NOx (g/m)

PM2.5, PM10 (Suspension particles less than 2.5 and 10 microns in diameter)
(g/m)

O3 (g/m)

Other as wind velocity, temperatura, pressure, solar radiation.

The last parameters will not be used initially, the research is focused on the first three
ones. Each day has an average of each parameter, therefore, to use this amount of data,
it is necessary to calculate an annual mean.
ArcMap represents geographic information as a collection of layers and other elements
in a map. The best application to use interpolation methods is to load a satellite image
and an administrative boundary, to delimite the area and operate to produce an optimal
visual result.

Fig. 2. A Castelln Landsat 8 image provided by the United States Geological Survey

2.4. Air Quality Modeling and Statistical Analysis

The database generated with geo-coordinates (station points) were brought to microsoft
excel and imported to Arc GIS software. Two different interpolation methods such as
IDW and kriging were tested.
The IDW method prefers the points closer to the processing points than the one away.
The power parameter in IDW interpolation controls the significance of surrounding
points. Hence higher power point two was set for creating air quality models as well as
to study the errors. This method is widely used to interpolate the climatic data to create
spatial models (Willmott and Matsuura, 1995).
Kriging method weights the surrounding values to predict values for unknown locality
based on its spatial arrangement. Ordinary Kriging method with spherical
semivariogram type was used to develop air quality model as well as to study error. In
addition, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), correlation and regression were also
performed to analyze the site-wise variation and validate the interpolation model of SO2

and NO2. Correlation is a simplified statistical tool to establish the relationship between
two variables and also show the degree of dependency of one variable to the other
(Belkhiri et al., 2010). The error analysis was carried out between actual and
interpolated values by means of three statistical tests, mean absolute error (MAE), root
mean square error (RMSE) and index of agreement (d) to validate the model. MAE is a
quantity used to measure how close forecasts or predictions are to the eventual
outcomes.

RMSE is another significant statistical parameter for error analysis.

Similarly,d estimates the close relation between actual and interpolated data.

Here, Xi, Si and s are measured, estimated and mean of the estimated values
respectively. Thed varies from 0 to 1 and is a dimensionless parameter. Lower MAE
and RMSE values and higher value of d, are used for better comparison.

3. Results
Due to the amount of data generated in this investigation, this research will only show
examples of two of the contamination parameters studied, Sulphur dioxide (! ) and
Nitrogen dioxide (! ). It is entirely viable to understand the difference between both
methods and to analyse the concentration.

3.1.Interpolation analysis
The statistical summary of errors (MAE, RMSE and d) related to each interpolation
method is presented in Table 1. The MAE corresponding to SO2 was low and varied
from 0.069 to 0.867. Similarly, RMSE was also low for SO2 and varied from 0.115 to
1.041. This can be attributed to lower range of SO2 concentrations.
The MAE and RMSE for NO2 varied from 0.115 to 2.268 and 0.143 to 2.945
respectively. Higher values of d observed in IDW interpolation method for NO2
(0.999) and SO2 (0.996). The higher value of d indicates better interpolation of
observed data and similarity between actual and interpolated values.
MAE

RMSE

Parameters

IDW

Kriging

IDW

Kriging

IDW

Kriging

0.069

0.867

0.115

1.041

0.996

0.523

0.115

2.268

0.143

2.945

0.999

0.327

Table 1. Statistical summary of errors in IDW and Kriging methods.

Fig. 3. Interpolated

Fig. 4. Interpolated

Both interpolation methods given good results but IDW interpolation was relatively
better than kriging method for the dataset used. This is visually apparent from the
interpolated maps as well. The IDW method created better interpolated surface for the
whole area of interest based on the observed data. This analysis is useful when the area
of interest is not covered due to accessibility and other practical intricacy to complete
the study for better monitoring and management practices.

4. Conclusions
Methods for quantification of contaminant effects are still under discussion.
An optimal procedure to reduce this pollution would be to increase public awareness to
enhance environmental protection.
The current state of knowledge has gaps and the purpose of this research is to reduce
this gaps by appliying GIS methods for a better interpretation of the results.
The SO2 and NO2 concentrations showed statistically significant site wise variations.
Moreover, in the present study interpolation technique applied to analyze modeling
error of air quality parameters. Such technique was useful to derive data from the unsampled locations. It was observed that IDW is suitable method for spatial modeling of
air quality parameters when the point observations are less whereas Kriging was
comparatively less suitable for similar dataset.
The IDW showed better similarity between measured and interpolated values of
contaminants than Kriging method. MAE and RMSE were low for air quality
parameters in IDW method. The d was observed higher in IDW method, which
attributes better similarity between measured and interpolated values.
Though all the recorded Castelln values were well below the permissible limits of
Spain, regular monitoring is vital to know the pollutants status for sustainable
management. It is concluded that Castelln can be maintained if developmental work
continues with proper environmental management plan.

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