Tools for Airshed Management

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Tools for Airshed Management
2005 BC Clean Air ForumRichmond, British
Columbia, 2005 April 22

• Colin di Cenzo
• Senior Air Quality Scientist
• Environment Canada
• colin.dicenzo_at_ec.gc.ca

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Air quality analysis and display tools

• AURAMS/GEM-LAM/SMOKE
• CMAQ/MC2/SMOKE
• UAM-IV/SAIMM/EPS2
• EI-VIEW
• EI-GIS
• Statistica Pollution App/TRADE

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Statistica Pollution App TRADE

• A Tale of Two Tools
• A Tale of Two Names
• A Tale of Two Functionalities

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The Problem

• Reams of ambient air quality data from numerous
  locations of numerous parameters in numerous
  formats
• How do we turn these data into sensible
  information

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The Answer

• Step 1 Organise the data then database them
• hourly vs. daily
• location
• station identifier
• parameter measured (CACs, toxics)
• period of record

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The Answer (contd)

• Step 2 Analyse the data select metrics
• hourly, daily monthly, yearly
• averages, maximums, exceedences, minimums, n-year
  running means, percentiles
• Step 3 Display the data
• box plots, line plots

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The Answer (contd)

• At this point we essentially have the Statistica
  Pollution App tool

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The Answer (contd)

• Not a bad tool!
• Pros
• extremely useful to generate metrics
• extremely useful to generate graphics
• Cons
• need specialised/expensive software
• need knowledge of station names, periods of
  record, parameters measured.

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The Answer (contd)

• Cons (contd)
• need skill to import/export data between
  Access/Excel/Statistica
• static database
• users really restricted to specialised scientists

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The Answer (contd)

• What if
• we had a helpful wizard/intelligent selection
  screens?
• we had the power of GIS, e.g. outline an area on
  a map for which we wanted information or areally
  display A/Q data with other data such as land-use
  or maximum temperatures?

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The Answer (contd)

• What if
• we could look at data on both sides of the
  Canada/USA border simultaneously?
• we could display data from different agencies in
  a consistent manner?
• what if it was web-based so anyone could access
  it?

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The Answer (contd)

• We did this, and we called it TRADE
• TRansboundary Air Data Exchange

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Data Access a 3 Step Program

• Step 1 Select Monitoring Stations
• Search By Text
• Search Using a Wizard
• Search Using a Map
• Step 2 Add Stations to Data Wagon
• Step 3 View Data Wagon
• Select information products one at a time
• Maps, Raw Data, Pollution Rose, Time Series,
  Frequency Analysis, Reports

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The Answer (contd)

• Truly not a bad tool!
• Pros
• all the pros of statistica plus
• open-source/architecture (can easily import other
  agencies contributions/shape files etc as they
  come along)
• data wagon concept
• areal display of information
• more products, e.g. pollution roses, frequency
  analyse
• more inclusive set of users
• Managers, Regulators, Private Sector, General
  Public

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The Answer (contd)

• Future work
• Move TRADE Web Outside EC Firewall
• Improve Non Data Content, Help and Tutorial
• More debugging
• Simplify for Casual User
• Fast Map, Fast Graph, Favorites
• Dynamic database updating

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Statistica Pollution App TRADE

• A Tale of Two Tools
• A Tale of Two Names
• A rose by any other name ...
• this software is more than air pollution
  statistics
• this software is more than simple data transfer
  between two countries
• We need a new name ... suggestions please
• And just because there will be an unfirewalled
  free version of this tool available sometime
  next Fall, please dont suggest Free TRADE