Bayesian Source Apportionment of Spatio-temporal air pollution data

Fuente: arXiv
Enregistré dans:
Détails bibliographiques
Auteurs principaux: Frigeri, Michela, Berrocal, Veronica, Guglielmi, Alessandra
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
Sujets:
Accès en ligne:
Tags: Ajouter un tag
Pas de tags, Soyez le premier à ajouter un tag!
_version_ 1866908622773026816
author Frigeri, Michela
Berrocal, Veronica
Guglielmi, Alessandra
author_facet Frigeri, Michela
Berrocal, Veronica
Guglielmi, Alessandra
contents Understanding the sources that contribute to fine particulate matter (PM$_{2.5}$) is of crucial importance for designing and implementing targeted air pollution mitigation strategies. Determining what factors contribute to a pollutant's concentration goes under the name of source apportionment and it is a problem long studied by atmospheric scientists and statisticians alike. In this paper, we propose a Bayesian model for source apportionment, that advances the literature on source apportionment by allowing estimation of the number of sources and accounting for spatial and temporal dependence in the observed pollutants' concentrations. Taking as example observations of six species of fine particulate matter observed over the course of a year, we present a latent functional factor model that expresses the space-time varying observations of log concentrations of the six pollutant as a linear combination of space-time varying emissions produced by an unknown number of sources each multiplied by the corresponding source's relative contribution to the pollutant. Estimation of the number of sources is achieved by introducing source-specific shrinkage parameters. Application of the model to simulated data showcases its ability to retrieve the true number of sources and to reliably estimate the functional latent factors, whereas application to PM$_{2.5}$ speciation data in California identifies 3 major sources for the six PM$_{2.5}$ species.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_27551
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Bayesian Source Apportionment of Spatio-temporal air pollution data
Frigeri, Michela
Berrocal, Veronica
Guglielmi, Alessandra
Applications
Methodology
Understanding the sources that contribute to fine particulate matter (PM$_{2.5}$) is of crucial importance for designing and implementing targeted air pollution mitigation strategies. Determining what factors contribute to a pollutant's concentration goes under the name of source apportionment and it is a problem long studied by atmospheric scientists and statisticians alike. In this paper, we propose a Bayesian model for source apportionment, that advances the literature on source apportionment by allowing estimation of the number of sources and accounting for spatial and temporal dependence in the observed pollutants' concentrations. Taking as example observations of six species of fine particulate matter observed over the course of a year, we present a latent functional factor model that expresses the space-time varying observations of log concentrations of the six pollutant as a linear combination of space-time varying emissions produced by an unknown number of sources each multiplied by the corresponding source's relative contribution to the pollutant. Estimation of the number of sources is achieved by introducing source-specific shrinkage parameters. Application of the model to simulated data showcases its ability to retrieve the true number of sources and to reliably estimate the functional latent factors, whereas application to PM$_{2.5}$ speciation data in California identifies 3 major sources for the six PM$_{2.5}$ species.
title Bayesian Source Apportionment of Spatio-temporal air pollution data
topic Applications
Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.27551