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Modeling air quality in main cities of Peninsular Malaysia by using a generalized Pareto model

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Abstract

The air pollution index (API) is an important figure used for measuring the quality of air in the environment. The API is determined based on the highest average value of individual indices for all the variables which include sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), carbon monoxide (CO), ozone (O3), and suspended particulate matter (PM10) at a particular hour. API values that exceed the limit of 100 units indicate an unhealthy status for the exposed environment. This study investigates the risk of occurrences of API values greater than 100 units for eight urban areas in Peninsular Malaysia for the period of January 2004 to December 2014. An extreme value model, known as the generalized Pareto distribution (GPD), has been fitted to the API values found. Based on the fitted model, return period for describing the occurrences of API exceeding 100 in the different cities has been computed as the indicator of risk. The results obtained indicated that most of the urban areas considered have a very small risk of occurrence of the unhealthy events, except for Kuala Lumpur, Malacca, and Klang. However, among these three cities, it is found that Klang has the highest risk. Based on all the results obtained, the air quality standard in urban areas of Peninsular Malaysia falls within healthy limits to human beings.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are indebted to the staff of the Department of Environment Malaysia for providing the wind speed data that made this paper possible. This research would not be possible without the sponsorship from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and Ministry of Higher Education in Malaysia (grant number FRGS/1/2014/SG04/UKM/03/1 and DPP-2015-FST).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mathematical Sciences, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia

    Nurulkamal Masseran, Ahmad Mahir Razali & Kamarulzaman Ibrahim

  2. Centre for Modeling and Data Analysis (DELTA), Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia

    Nurulkamal Masseran, Ahmad Mahir Razali & Kamarulzaman Ibrahim

  3. School of Environmental and Natural Resource Sciences, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia

    Mohd Talib Latif

  4. Institute for Environment and Development (LESTARI), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia

    Mohd Talib Latif

Authors
  1. Nurulkamal Masseran
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  2. Ahmad Mahir Razali
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  3. Kamarulzaman Ibrahim
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  4. Mohd Talib Latif
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Correspondence to Nurulkamal Masseran.

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Masseran, N., Razali, A.M., Ibrahim, K. et al. Modeling air quality in main cities of Peninsular Malaysia by using a generalized Pareto model. Environ Monit Assess 188, 65 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-015-5070-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-015-5070-9

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