Back-extrapolating a land use regression model for estimating past exposures to traffic-related air pollution.

ABSTRACT: Land use regression (LUR) models rely on air pollutant measurements for their development, and are therefore limited to recent periods where such measurements are available. Here we propose an approach to overcome this gap and calculate LUR models several decades before measurements were available. We first developed a LUR model for NOx using annual averages of NOx at all available air quality monitoring sites in Israel between 1991 and 2011 with time as one of the independent variables. We then reconstructed historical spatial data (e.g., road network) from historical topographic maps to apply the model's prediction to each year from 1961 to 2011. The model's predictions were then validated against independent estimates about the national annual NOx emissions from on-road vehicles in a to

SUBMITTER: Levy I 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4763339 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature