GAPS: Geo Data Portals for Air Pollution Studies

TL;DR

This paper presents GAPS, a set of libraries and dashboards that simplify access, integration, and visualization of air pollution data for non-specialist users, enabling broader research and policy analysis.

Contribution

The development of libraries and dashboards that facilitate data integration, processing, and visualization of air pollution data for non-experts is a novel approach.

Findings

Libraries enable aggregation of diverse pollution data sources.

Dashboards provide accessible visualization of pollution trends.

Tools extend data accessibility for researchers and policymakers.

Abstract

There is a wealth of data on air pollution within several users' reach, including modelled concentrations and depositions as well as observations from air quality stations. However, data integration to perceive spatial and temporal trends at the national level is a complex undertaking. The difficulties are mainly related to the data sources (many files with a lot of information and in different formats). In addition, the processing of this data is time-consuming and impractical when the time period under analysis increases. Furthermore,the processing of spatial-temporal data requires the use of multiple specific tools, such as geographic information systems software and statistical, which are not readily accessible to non-specialised users. The proposed solution is to develop libraries that are responsible for aggregating different types of data related with pollution. In addition to allowing the integration of different data, the libraries are also the basis for developing web applications. The libraries allow the collection of data made available by the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA) and official modelling results for Europe. The applications developed will extend the libraries to allow data processing and representation through Dashboards. These Dashboards provide access to non-specialised users, namely regarding the trends of pollutants in each region. The implemented libraries allow the development of projects that would need access to the same data sources. These Dashboards allow for simplified access to data and for studies that have so far been beyond the reach of researchers.