Abstract. To provide long-term air pollutant exposure estimates for
epidemiological studies, it is essential to test the feasibility of
developing land-use regression (LUR) models using only routine air quality
measurement data and to evaluate the transferability of LUR models between
nearby cities. In this study, we developed and evaluated the intercity
transferability of annual-average LUR models for ambient respirable
suspended particulates (PM10), fine suspended particulates
(PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and ozone (O3) in the
Taipei–Keelung metropolitan area of northern Taiwan in 2019. Ambient
PM10, PM2.5, NO2 and O3 measurements at 30 fixed-site
stations were used as the dependent variables, and a total of 156 potential
predictor variables in six categories (i.e., population density, road
network, land-use type, normalized difference vegetation index, meteorology
and elevation) were extracted using buffer spatial analysis. The LUR models
were developed using the supervised forward linear regression approach. The
LUR models for ambient PM10, PM2.5, NO2 and O3 achieved
relatively high prediction performance, with R2 values of > 0.72 and leave-one-out cross-validation (LOOCV) R2 values of
> 0.53. The intercity transferability of LUR models varied among
the air pollutants, with transfer-predictive R2 values of > 0.62 for NO2 and < 0.56 for the other three pollutants. The
LUR-model-based 500 m × 500 m spatial-distribution maps of these
air pollutants illustrated pollution hot spots and the heterogeneity of
population exposure, which provide valuable information for policymakers in
designing effective air pollution control strategies. The LUR-model-based
air pollution exposure estimates captured the spatial variability in
exposure for participants in a cohort study. This study highlights that LUR
models can be reasonably established upon a routine monitoring network, but
there exist uncertainties when transferring LUR models between nearby
cities. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to evaluate
the intercity transferability of LUR models in Asia.
Satellite-Based NO2 and Model Validation in a National Prediction Model Based on Universal Kriging and Land-Use Regression