Air pollution over Romania: spatial relationship betweensocio-economic indicators and air pollutants using univariate and bivariate local indicators

Abstract

It has been proven that air pollution is closely related to the level of socio-economic development of a country. Various levels of development generate different level of by-products, including air pollution, deteriorating therefore the air quality at regional levels in peculiar ways. Romania is the largest country in southeastern Europe with a very complex economic development level and air pollution disparities among cities.

This paper aims to study main socio-economic indicators (as measures of the effect of human activities on air pollution and climate) for over 30 cities in Romania with diferent levels of economic development, to determine the relationship between these variables and air pollution condition. We focused on the spatial relationship between main gaseous air pollutants and the following indicators GDP, GDP/capita, resident population, number of private vehicles and life expectancy.

In this research we created two data sets as follow: first one consists of daily values of air pollutant (CO, NO₂, O­­₃, SO₂) mass concentrations extracted from the Romanian National Air Quality Network and the second set consists of socio-economic indicators (GDP, GDP/capita, resident population, number of private vehicles and life expectancy) obtained from Romanian National Institute of Statistics. The study was conducted over five years, from 01.01.2016 to 31.12.2020 using yearly means of air pollutants from the first dataset in all selected urban areas in the Romanian territory and corelate them with the socio-economic indicators from the second data set using univariate LISA and bivariate LISA statistical analysis methods.

The analysis demonstrated the correlation of socio-economic indicators with the increase of the air pollution in the study area. Other highlights of the study: (a) Range of major air pollutant levels in 30 urban agglomerations across Romania from 2016 to 2020 was assessed (b) Maps of interpolated mass concentrations reveal regional significant differences with pollutant-specific hot- and cold-spots in Romania. Regional significant differences can be observed; (c) Results show pollution decreases for most pollutants in most cities in 2020 due to pandemic restrictions.

The results of present study can be beneficial to local authorities in order to help them in their decisions for abatement pollution strategies at the country scale combined with regional measures.

 

Acknowledgment

The research leading to these results has received funding from the NO Grants 2014-2021, under Project contract no. 31/2020, EEA-RO-NO-2019-0423 project. Data regarding ground-based air pollutants were extracted from the Romanian National Air Quality Database, www.calitateaer.ro. Economy indicators were provided by National Institute of Statistics http://statistici.insse.ro:8077/tempo-online/. Databases were last accessed in December 2022.