Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Forecasting the Tropospheric Ozone using Artificial Neural Network Modelling Approach: A Case Study of Megacity Madras, India

Abstract

Anurag Kandya *,Shiva Nagendra SM ,Vivek Kumar Tiwari

Ozone, which is a secondary pollutant in the troposphere, is very injurious to human health causing irritation of respiratory system, reducing lung capacity, etc. Adversely affecting the plant growth and deteriorating the materials. Thus it is of prime importance to predict the ozone concentration so that effective mitigation strategies can be adopted. As the formation of the tropospheric ozone is dependent on various meteorological parameters and the concentration of various other air pollutants, it is necessary to consider this dependence aspect in the modelling approach. In this background, the present paper puts forward the study of short-term prediction of tropospheric ozone concentration using Artificial Neural Network (ANN) modelling approach for a busy traffic junction of Madras city, one of the four megacities of India. 8-hourly averaged values of 11 air pollutants concentrations and 6 meteorological parameters were used for the study. The respective data was collected at a busy traffic junction of the city for a period of 19 months i.e. during September 2008–March 2010. 70% of the data was used for training the ANN models while the remaining of 30% data was used for validating them. By changing the neural architecture, 34 ANN models were formulated which were statistically analyzed. Based on the encouraging results (d=0.80, r=0.69, etc.), the paper puts forward the suitability of ANN modelling approach for the short-term prediction of tropospheric ozone concentration.