Air quality (AQ) identification by innovative trend diagram and AQ indexcombinations in Istanbul megacity

Özet

Istanbul is one of the megacities with population over 14 million, where the most intensive economic and socialhuman activities take place in Turkey with unprecedented energy consumption and extravagant life style. Theseactivities cause air pollutant emissions and concentrations increases under the additional effects of greenhousegasses and waste heat with their impacts on ecosystems, climate change and air quality.In order to control and improve the air quality at different quarters of Istanbul City, various air pollutants aremonitored for effective combat. For this purpose, time series records of the pollutants (particulatematter < 10μm in diameter such as dust, pollen, mold, etc. (PM10), carbon monoxide (CO), sulfur dioxide(SO2) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2)) are subjected to innovative trend diagram (ITD) analysis coupled with the airquality index (AQI) classification according to the US Environmental Protection Agency health status. LinguisticAQI classes are considered for pollutant levels with linguistic trend interpretations through the ITD diagram. Thecombination of ITD and AQI provides opportunity to detect trends at each class. The application of the meth-odology is presented for Esenler and Beşiktaşstations on the European, and Kadıköy and Ümraniye stations onthe Asian sides of Istanbul City.