The Daily Bulletin

Hutong Fan, a master’s degree candidate in the Great Lakes environmental science program at Buffalo State College, will present an oral defense of his thesis, “Spatial and Temporal Analysis of Big Dataset on PM2.5 Air Pollution in Beijing, China, 2014 to 2018,” on Thursday, March 3, from 9:00 to 10:30 a.m. in Buckham Hall A108. All are invited to attend.

Abstract
Air particulate matter (PM2.5) pollution is a critical environment problem worldwide and also in Beijing, China. We gathered five-year PM2.5 contaminate concentrations from 2014 to 2018 from the Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center and China Air Quality Real-time Distribution Platform. This is a big dataset, and we collected with crawler technology from Python programming. After examining the quality of the recorded data, we determined to conduct the temporal and spatial analysis using 27 observation stations located in both urban and suburb area in the municipality of Beijing. The big dataset of five-year hourly PM2.5 concentrations was sorted to actionable datasets (Selected Datasets and Seasonal Average Selected Datasets) with the help of Python programming.

The results of this research are (1) PM2.5 pollutions in winter are the most severe or the highest in each of the natural years. (2) PM2.5 pollution concentrations in Beijing were gradually decreased during 2014 to 2018. (3) In terms of a five-year time perspective, the improvements of air quality and reduction of PM2.5 contaminant appeared in all the seasons based on Fundamental Data Analysis. (4) PM2.5 contaminant concentrations in summer are significantly less than other seasons. (5) The least PM2.5 pollutant influenced area is north and northwest regions in Beijing, and the most PM2.5 pollutant influenced area is south and southeast areas in Beijing. (6) Vehicle concentration and traffic congestion are not the significant impact factor of PM2.5 pollutions in Beijing. (7) Heating supply of buildings and houses generated great contributions to the PM2.5 contaminant concentration in Beijing. While in the background of rigorous emission reduction policy and management operations by the municipal government, contribution of heating supplies is gradually decreasing. (8) Human activities have limited contributions to the PM2.5 contaminants in Beijing. Meanwhile, type and quantity of fossil fuel energy consumptions might contribute large amount of air pollutions.