Measurement-Error-Aware Causal Distributed-Lag Quantile Modeling of Indoor Air Pollution and Short-Term Lung-Function Deterioration
Organizations: Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain, United Arab Emirates · Department of Computer Science, National University of Modern languages, Lahore, Pakistan
Abstract
Low-cost indoor air-quality sensors could support personalized asthma prevention, but their nonlinear measurement error, delayed exposure effects, time-varying confounding, and heterogeneous lower-tail responses limit risk estimation. We present CAUSALQUANT-ASTHMA, a measurement-error-aware causal quantile distributed-lag framework for short-horizon peak expiratory flow analysis. Sparse reference measurements train a nonlinear calibration model; stabilized sequential generalized-propensity weights address measured exposure assignment; and a susceptibility-modulated, smooth, noncrossing quantile model estimates lag-specific and sustained-exposure contrasts. Because no authorized cohort simultaneously provided dense indoor sensing, reference co-location, and outcome-compatible longitudinal data, evaluation used five semi-synthetic panels with known counterfactual truth, 150 patients and 12,600 patient-days per realization. Across eight methods, CAUSALQUANT achieved a dose-response integrated absolute error of 0.304 plus or minus 0.094, improving 24.2 percent over the strongest measurement-error and propensity-weighted baseline. It also obtained the lowest overall pinball loss, 1.065, while maintaining zero quantile crossings and 78.1 percent coverage for the nominal 80 percent interval. Sensor calibration reduced held-out exposure RMSE by 33.7 percent. Stress tests quantified degradation under sensor noise, missing personal measurements, and hidden confounding. These findings establish methodological feasibility and reproducibility, not clinical effectiveness; prospective, governance-approved external validation is required before patient-level interpretation or deployment.
Figures & tables
| Study | Setting | Principal method | L | M | C | Q | Main limitation relative to the present objective |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bae et al. [ 9 ] | Adult asthma, indoor IAQ | Logistic and quantile regression with fixed summaries | – | – | Small panel; fixed exposure windows; no causal weighting or reference-sensor correction. | ||
| Marín et al. [ 5 ] | Moderate/severe asthma | Personalized sensor ecosystem with lagged association analysis | – | – | Feasibility-focused study; thirteen adults and no stable exposure–health association. | ||
| González-Colom et al. [ 6 ] | Chronic respiratory homes | Two-month low-cost household screening | – | – | – | Retrospective clinical outcomes and category-level IAQ summaries cannot identify short-horizon effects. | |
| Evoy et al. [ 12 ] | Adults with asthma | Panel regression for temperature and pollution | – | – | – | Ambient exposure and mean effects; limited treatment of indoor sensor error and tails. | |
| Tsang et al. [ 15 ] | Connected asthma monitoring | Multimodal longitudinal benchmark and predictive modeling | – | – | – | Rich monitoring but not a causal indoor-exposure dose–response estimator. | |
| Wilson et al. [ 35 ] | Environmental epidemiology | Partially linear single-index QDLM | – | – | Flexible quantile lags without sensor observation model or longitudinal causal weighting. |
| Symbol | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Patient, day, and sensor-channel indices | |
| PEF outcome, percentage of personal best | |
| Latent indoor PM 2.5 concentration ( g/m 3 ) | |
| Low-cost and reference PM 2.5 readings | |
| Measured exposure and outcome history before day | |
| Baseline susceptibility variables |
| Characteristic | Value |
|---|---|
| Patients per realization | 150 |
| Patient-days per realization | 12,600 |
| Train/validation/test patients | 90 / 30 / 30 |
| Reference-monitor training days | 1670 42 |
| Indoor PM 2.5 , mean SD | 16.2 8.0 g/m 3 |
| PEF, mean SD | 93.2 5.6% |
| Item | Setting |
|---|---|
| Lag horizon | 0–6 days |
| Quantiles | |
| Seeds | |
| GPS history | 3 days |
| GPS clipping | 2nd–98th percentile |
| Intervention grid | – g/m 3 |
| Method | Dose-response IAE | AQTE bias | Pinball | QCE | 10–90 coverage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CAUSALQUANT | 0.304 0.094 | 0.533 | 1.065 | 0.0120 | 78.1% |
| ME-GPS-QDLM | 0.401 0.208 | 0.717 | 1.068 | 0.0106 | 77.9% |
| SC-QDLM | 1.771 0.305 | 3.247 | 1.074 | 0.0117 | 78.9% |
| GPS-QDLM | 1.938 0.272 | 3.544 | 1.083 | 0.0154 | 77.9% |
| QRF | 2.184 0.140 | 3.083 | 1.140 | 0.0607 | 63.5% |
| PLSI-QDLM | 2.486 0.243 | 4.000 | 1.094 | 0.0211 | 76.0% |
| Comparator | Improvement | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SC-QDLM | 1.467 | 0.0312 | 0.125 | 5.49 |
| PLSI-QDLM | 2.182 | 0.0312 | 0.125 | 14.13 |
| QRF | 1.880 | 0.0312 | 0.125 | 15.00 |
| ME-GPS-QDLM | 0.097 | 0.2188 | 0.219 | 0.47 |
| Variant | IAE | Pinball | Crossing |
|---|---|---|---|
| CAUSALQUANT | 0.157 | 1.085 | 0.0% |
| without GPS weighting | 0.350 | 1.077 | 0.0% |
| without measurement correction | 1.762 | 1.102 | 0.0% |
| without susceptibility interaction | 0.223 | 1.095 | 0.0% |
| without smooth/noncrossing constraints | 0.157 | 1.088 | 0.8% |
| Method | Fit (s) | ms/1000 | MB | Params/nodes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CAUSALQUANT | 0.23 | 0.68 | 412 | 145 |
| ME-GPS-QDLM | 0.19 | 0.54 | 412 | 110 |
| SC-QDLM | 0.18 | 0.57 | 402 | 110 |
| GPS-QDLM | 0.15 | 0.58 | 411 | 110 |
| QRF | 5.04 | 22.49 | 410 | 92,734 |
| PLSI-QDLM | 1.44 | 18.78 | 403 | 450 |
Causal Effect Estimation
Causal effect estimation measures how outcomes would change under interventions, using experiments or observational data and explicit assumptions.
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