A scalable deep learning system for monitoring and forecasting pollutant concentration levels on UK highways

Akinosho, Taofeek D.; Oyedele, Lukumon O.; Bilal, Muhammad; Barrera-Animas, Ari Y.; Gbadamosi, Abdul Quayyum; Olawale, Oladimeji A.

Abstract

The construction of intercity highways by the government has resulted in a progressive increase in vehicle emissions and pollution from noise, dust, and vibrations despite its recognition of the air pollution menace. Efforts that have targeted roadside pollution still do not accurately monitor deadly pollutants such as nitrogen oxides and particulate matter. Reports on regional highways across the country are based on a limited number of fixed monitoring stations that are sometimes located far from the highway. These periodic and coarse-grained measurements cause inefficient highway air quality reporting, leading to inaccurate air quality forecasts. This paper, therefore, proposes and validates a scalable deep learning framework for efficiently capturing fine-grained highway data and forecasting future concentration levels. Highways in four different UK regions - Newport, Lewisham, Southwark, and Chepstow were used as case studies to develop a REVIS system and validate the proposed framework. REVIS examined the framework's ability to capture granular pollution data, scale up its storage facility to rapid data growth and translate high-level user queries to structured query language (SQL) required for exploratory data analysis. Finally, the framework's suitability for predictive analytics was tested using fastai's library for tabular data, and automated hyperparameter tuning was implemented using bayesian optimisation. The results of our experiments demonstrate the suitability of the proposed framework in building end-to-end systems for extensive monitoring and forecasting of pollutant concentration levels on highways. The study serves as a background for future related research looking to improve the overall performance of roadside and highway air quality forecasting models.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 23, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Mar 5, 2022
• Publication Date: Jul 1, 2022
• Deposit Date: Mar 9, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 6, 2023
• Journal: Ecological Informatics
• Print ISSN: 1574-9541
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 69
• Article Number: 101609
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoinf.2022.101609
• Keywords: Urban air pollution; Air quality prediction; Highway; Deep learning; Big data; Internet of things
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/9187666
• Additional Information: This article is maintained by: Elsevier; Article Title: A scalable deep learning system for monitoring and forecasting pollutant concentration levels on UK highways; Journal Title: Ecological Informatics; CrossRef DOI link to publisher maintained version: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoinf.2022.101609; Content Type: article; Copyright: © 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.