Spatio-temporal visualization and forecasting of PM 10 in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais

Abstract

Air pollution due to air contamination by gases, liquids, and solid particles in suspension, is a great environmental and public health concern nowadays. An important type of air pollution is particulate matter with a diameter of 10 microns or less (PM 10) because one of the determining factors that affect human health is the size of particles in the atmosphere due to the degree of permanence and penetration they have in the respiratory system. Therefore, it is extremely interesting to monitor and understand the behavior of PM 10 concentrations so that they do not exceed the established critical levels. In this work, we will study the PM 10 concentrations in all available monitoring stations in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. To better understand its behavior, we will provide a spatio-temporal visualization of the PM 10 concentrations. Besides the descriptive and visualization analysis, we consider six standard and advanced time series models that will be used to fit and forecast PM 10 concentrations, with application to three locations, one in Belo Horizonte, the Minas Gerais state capital, and the monitoring stations with the lowest and highest average PM 10 concentration levels.