Authors: Daniel Eum, Finn Chenevert, Li-Yu Hsu, Daniel Martinez, Rupali Ramalingam
Link: https://danieleum.shinyapps.io/global-air-quality/
Climate change is a daunting reality obstructing the quality-of-life for future generations. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is often mentioned within this conversation, but the amount of pollution in the air is scarcely motioned. PM2.5 is a very common pollutant in the air. PM2.5 is very bad for people as it can cause coughing and sneezing in the short term, but later, could lead to heart disease, lung cancer and other major life threatening issues (reference). The questions we are seeking to answer from our analysis including what changes in air pollution over the last decade for the whole world? Which countries had the highest levels of air pollution? What phases of industrialization are the countries in that are producing the most and least air pollution? How can we utilize the data that we collected to predict future air pollution outcomes?
The dataset we are using to answer the questions was founded on kaggle.com(dataset). The data was collected by Karl Weinmeister. The data was collected through the World Bank website. The data was collected to show the historical air quality data from 2010-2017 for 240 countries. The possible challenges and limitations we might encounter while implementing this project include the accuracy of national data, whether there were unique situations leading to increased PM2.5 air pollution in certain countries, and background information the population and development level of a country. we should focus more on countries that have larger populations or developed because the air pollution changes of these countries could be closer to reality. The pattern we are going to find in these countries could be more reliable to do further research in this field.
Over the past decade, the pattern of air pollution change, as indicated by The Annual Mean World PM.2 chart shows minute changes worldwide. It also proves to show how most of the air pollution is concentrated in North Africa and Asia, with numbers increasing in countries within Africa. According to calculations, Nepal had the highest air pollution compared to any other country, with its highest being in 2010 with a PM.2 reaching 100.78 micrograms per cubic meter as shown by the Annual Mean PM.2 Exposure in Each Country bar graph. Finland, on the other hand, had one of the least amounts of air pollution reaching an all-time low of 5.86 micrograms per cubic meter of air pollution in 2017 as shown by the Annual Mean PM.2 Exposure in Each Country bar graph.
From this analysis, it can be seen that while there is concern regarding the state of air pollution around the world, the data provides hope for the amelioration of air quality. There as only been minute changes in air quality overall, meaning that there aren’t any drastic changes that are out of control. Additionally, Nepal, India, and China, countries with some of the highest air pollutants in the world, have had consistently decreasing numbers over the past decade. The broader implication of this insight is that current practices are clearly improving air quality and if these practices continue, so can the trend of better air quality. However, there are countries with increasing air pollution, as discussed before, and if proper attention is brought to this concerning issue, then new practices can be adopted in those regions to ameliorate air quality. This data can therefore be used for the adoption of better practices.