A European Air Quality Monitor

Air pollution is a health risk to millions of citizens in Europe. Critical concentrations of nitrogen-dioxide (NO2), ozone (O3), and particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5) occur predominantly in densely populated areas affected by high volumes of traffic or industry. Although several thousand air quality stations scattered over Europe record hourly measurements, the EEA publishes continuous maps on an annual basis with considerable time lag. However, there is a public benefit in accessing such maps more timely. With the OEMC Air Quality Monitor we design tools which streamline the mapping workflow building on top of the EEA methodology. The process includes gathering and preprocessing data (both measurements and covariates) and making spatial predictions for the four mentioned air pollutants. We leverage public station measurements, gridded climate and atmospheric transport model outputs, and land cover and traffic information as well as open source software. This combination facilitates a transparent way to map air quality in Europe at one kilometer spatial resolution for daily, monthly, and annual intervals.