Comparative Analysis of Predictive Models for Fine Particulate Matter in Daejeon, South Korea

Abstract

Air pollution is a critical problem that is of major concern worldwide. South Korea is one of the countries most affected by air pollution. Rapid urbanization and industrialization in South Korea have induced air pollution in multiple forms, such as smoke from factories and exhaust from vehicles. In this paper, we perform a comparative analysis of predictive models for fine particulate matter in Daejeon, the fifth largest city in South Korea. This study is conducted for three purposes. The first purpose is to determine the factors that may cause air pollution. Two main factors are considered: meteorological and traffic. The second purpose is to find an optimal predictive model for air pollutant concentration. We apply machine learning and deep learning models to the collected dataset to predict hourly air pollutant concentrations. The accuracy of the deep learning models is better than that of the machine learning models. The third purpose is to analyze the influence of road conditions on predicting air pollutant concentration. Experimental results demonstrate that considering wind direction and wind speed could significantly decrease the error rate of the predictive models.