Paper ID: 2208.12719

Modelling spatio-temporal trends of air pollution in Africa

Paterne Gahungu, Jean Remy Kubwimana, Lionel Jean Marie Benjamin Muhimpundu, Egide Ndamuzi

Atmospheric pollution remains one of the major public health threat worldwide with an estimated 7 millions deaths annually. In Africa, rapid urbanization and poor transport infrastructure are worsening the problem. In this paper, we have analysed spatio-temporal variations of PM2.5 across different geographical regions in Africa. The West African region remains the most affected by the high levels of pollution with a daily average of 40.856 $\mu g/m^3$ in some cities like Lagos, Abuja and Bamako. In East Africa, Uganda is reporting the highest pollution level with a daily average concentration of 56.14 $\mu g/m^3$ and 38.65 $\mu g/m^3$ for Kigali. In countries located in the central region of Africa, the highest daily average concentration of PM2.5 of 90.075 $\mu g/m^3$ was recorded in N'Djamena. We compare three data driven models in predicting future trends of pollution levels. Neural network is outperforming Gaussian processes and ARIMA models.

Submitted: Aug 21, 2022