Identification of Air Pollution Sources and Temporal Assessment of Air Quality at a Sector in Mosul City Using Principal Component Analysis

Abstract

This study was carried out to apply principal component analysis (PCA) as a tool to identify the major sources responsible stand behind air pollution variation in a sector of Mosul city for the first time. In addition, Besides, PCA was used to construct a temporal overall air quality assessment index to find the period of best air quality along the year. The data was collected through a monitoring station located in the public library on a side of a very crowded highway and near a traffic light intersection in Mosul city. It The data involves the measurements of O 3 , NO, NO 2 , NO x , SO 2 , CO, CO 2 , CH 4 , TH, NMHC and PM 10 for a year. Air quality parameters were analyzed using PCA seasonally and yearly. The study found that the pollutants produced by vehicular traffic exhibited more variation with a percentage of 56.91 to 73.75%. The results showed that traffic pollution is the main contributor to air quality variation with 56.91 to 73.75%. It is verified by the gases CO, NO, NO x , O 3 , THC and CO 2 . The temporal assessment of monthly air quality showed that the Best air quality was recorded in March followed by April. Whereas, the worst air quality was observed in January. The study concluded that the application of PCA to air quality data had drawn the parameters responsible for air quality variation and detect the sources of air pollution efficiently. In addition, The results of PCA can be helpful in the design of the program of measurements in the monitoring station.

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“…Before conducting further analysis, preliminary assessments are required to ensure that the dataset is sufficient for analysis [25,26]. Additionally, Bartlett's test evaluates whether the variables in a dataset are significantly correlated (p≤0.05), while the KMO test assesses the sampling adequacy, and requires value equal to or greater than 0.5 to confirm that the dataset is sufficient for further analysis.…”

“…A p-value <0.0001 for Bartlett's test as shown in Table 5 justifies the acceptance of the Ha hypothesis while the result for the KMO test in Table 6 indicates adequacy with a value of 0.614. Therefore, it can be concluded that the variables are correlated, and the sampling is adequate for analysis (Bartlett, 1954;Shihab, 2022).…”

“…A p-value <0.0001 for Bartlett's test as shown in Table 5 justifies the acceptance of the Ha hypothesis while the result for the KMO test in Table 6 indicates adequacy with a value of 0.614. Therefore, it can be concluded that the variables are correlated, and the sampling is adequate for analysis [26,35]. Principal component analysis (PCA) was employed to distinguish the patterns of air quality variables and subsequently identify factors associated with the discovered clusters (HPC, MPC, and LPC).…”

Forecasting Air Quality in Peninsular Malaysia: Unveiling the Power of Artificial Neural Networks

“…Z ij = a i1 x 1j + a i2 x 2j + a i3 x 3j + ... + a im x mj (1) where Z is the component score, a is the component loading, x is the measured value of the variable, i is the component number, j is the sample number, and m is the total number of variables (Isiyaka & Azid, 2015;Shihab, 2022).…”

Assessment of the Ambient Gaseous Pollutants in the Crowded Traffic Crossroad in Baghdad City

“…By analyzing the concentration of pollutants during COVID-19 lockdown and prelockdown periods, this study sought to determine the impact of COVID-19 lockdown on air quality in Hyderabad, India (Allu et al, 2021). Shihab (2022) has applied the principal component analysis (PCA) as a tool to determine the main causes underlying variations in air pollution in a part of the Iraqi metropolis of Mosul, where a temporal overall air standard evaluation index was created using PCA to determine when the air quality was at its best throughout the year. The information was gathered using a substation housed in a public library close to a traffic light intersection and an extremely congested motorway in Mosul city.…”