Location Impact on Particulate Matter (PM) Concentration Reduction Dduring COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Significant topic of interest in many European countries is monitoring the air pollution, especially particulate matter (PM) concentrations, mostly because of its harmful effects on the human health. Measurement of the particulate matter concentrations can be done in a different ways, one of the possible solutions is by using low-cost and energy-efficient monitoring system using sensor network. The main goal of this paper is to analyze the influence of the green areas on particulate matter mitigation, analyzing the period of pandemic COVID-19 restrictions. The paper analyze the connection among the impact of the location of the sensor nodes and green areas and other objects to the particulate matter concentrations using various statistical tools and hypothesis testing. The tests are based on the data collected during summer 2020 at the technical campus of the Ss Cyril and Methodius University. This is the period when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 pandemic, and the universities were closed. In this research it can be confirmed that green areas at the Faculty pacio, reduced traffic vehicles and not having presence of the faculty staff in this period have a high impact in the reduction of particulate matter.