What is it about?
The COVID-19 lockdown established in Italy in the spring of 2020, characterized by the mandated closure of most business activities and the confinement of the population at home, created the unique opportunity to study the impact of traffic and industrial activities on the air pollution problem afflicting Northern Italy. In this study, we exploited a dense sensor network deployed in the city of Pavia to investigate how air pollution changed between the lockdown period and the same period in the previous year. We used statistical methods and Mixed-Effect Models to consider the effects of weather and characterize the pollution trends by hour.
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Why is it important?
Dense sensor networks like the one in Pavia, that allow to measure pollution with high spatial and temporal granularities, are extremely uncommon, as air pollution data is usually available from a low number of sensors scattered in large environments and with coarse temporal granularities. Thanks to this network, we were able to create an extremely detailed year-by-year assessment, analyzing the differences to an hourly temporal granularity, and investigating the effects of meteorological variables in different urban areas.
Perspectives
I hope that the findings of this article, together with the many studies about air pollution in Northern Italy, will help to shed light on the dynamics that lead to high levels of pollution in this area, in order to understand which phenomena contribute the most and define effective interventions to limit the possibility of hazardous consequences for the population, as most strategies developed so far by the local political institutions have not been sufficiently effective.
Daniele Pala
Universita degli Studi di Pavia
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Impact of COVID-19 lockdown on PM concentrations in an Italian Northern City: A year-by-year assessment, PLOS One, March 2022, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0263265.
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