Background: Land use regression (LUR) models have been developed mostly to explain intraurban variations in air pollution based on often small local monitoring campaigns. Transferability of LUR models from city to city has been investigated, but little is known about the performance of models based on large numbers of monitoring sites covering a large area.
Objectives: We aimed to develop European and regional LUR models and to examine their transferability to areas not used for model development.
Methods: We evaluated LUR models for nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and particulate matter (PM; PM2.5, PM2.5 absorbance) by combining standardized measurement data from 17 (PM) and 23 (NO2) ESCAPE (European Study of Cohorts for Air Pollution Effects) study areas across 14 European countries for PM and NO2. Models were evaluated with cross-validation (CV) and hold-out validation (HV). We investigated the transferability of the models by successively excluding each study area from model building.
Results: The European model explained 56% of the concentration variability across all sites for NO2, 86% for PM2.5, and 70% for PM2.5 absorbance. The HV R2s were only slightly lower than the model R2 (NO2, 54%; PM2.5, 80%; PM2.5 absorbance, 70%). The European NO2, PM2.5, and PM2.5 absorbance models explained a median of 59%, 48%, and 70% of within-area variability in individual areas. The transferred models predicted a modest-to-large fraction of variability in areas that were excluded from model building (median R2: NO2, 59%; PM2.5, 42%; PM2.5 absorbance, 67%).
Conclusions: Using a large data set from 23 European study areas, we were able to develop LUR models for NO2 and PM metrics that predicted measurements made at independent sites and areas reasonably well. This finding is useful for assessing exposure in health studies conducted in areas where no measurements were conducted.
1Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands; 2Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden; 3Institute of Epidemiology I, Helmholtz Zentrum München, German Research Center for Environmental Health, Neuherberg, Germany; 4Epidemiology Department, Lazio Regional Health Service, Rome, Italy; 5Center for Research in Environmental Epidemiology (CREAL), Barcelona, Spain; 6Institute of Epidemiology II, Helmholtz Zentrum München, German Research Center for Environmental Health, Neuherberg, Germany; 7University of Augsburg, Environmental Science Center, Augsburg, Germany; 8MRC-PHE Centre for Environment and Health, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom; 9French Institute for Public Health Surveillance, Saint-Maurice, France; 10Department of Hygiene, Epidemiology and Medical Statistics, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Medical School, Athens, Greece; 11Danish Cancer Society Research Center, Copenhagen, Denmark; 12AOU Città della Salute e della Scienza–Center for Cancer Prevention (CPO Piedmont), Turin, Italy; 13School of Chemical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece; 14IUF Leibniz Research Institute for Environmental Medicine, University of Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany; 15Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, Basel, Switzerland; 16Department of Environmental Health, National Institute for Health and Welfare, Kuopio, Finland; 17School of Environment and Development (Geography), University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom; 18Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden; 19Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom; 20Institute of Health and Society, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway; 21Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo, Norway; 22University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland; 23Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, USA; 24Department of Air Hygiene, National Institute of Environmental Health, Budapest, Hungary; 25Institute of Epidemiology and Medical Biometry, Ulm University, Ulm, Germany; 26Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, the Netherlands
Recommended Citation:
Meng Wang,1 Rob Beelen,1 Tom Bell,et al. Performance of Multi-City Land Use Regression Models for Nitrogen Dioxide and Fine Particles[J]. Environmental Health Perspectives,2014-01-01,Volume 122(Issue 8):843