Information integration: A case study of air quality in Chicago and St Louis

Abstract

Government agencies are increasingly making raw data available to citizens, but merely having access to data is not sufficient to realize the potential of "big data". Answering questions in science, business, and public policy requires data integration which is challenging when data from different sources are used for different reasons. This project provides a detailed case study of how to integrate public data to understand the relationship between demographic factors and air quality. Demographic factors from US Census and American Community Survey were collected for two major cities (Chicago and St. Louis) and then integrated with air quality from the US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA). Results show that air quality has improved in both cities between 2000 and 2012. Determining correlations between ethnicity, education, level of income and air quality warrant further exploration.