Estimation of Air Quality in Aba Urban, Nigeria Using the Multiple Linear Regression Technique

The need to continuously monitor the air quality in our environment has continued to grow due to the ever increasing level of atmospheric pollutants. Indoor air pollution and urban air pollution are listed as two of the world’s worst toxic pollution problems in the 2008 Blacksmith institute world’s worst polluted places report. According to the 2014 WHO report, air pollution in 2012 caused the deaths of around 7 million people worldwide. Air pollution can be natural or man-made. The major primary man-made pollutants are Sulphur dioxide (SO2), Nitrogen dioxide, (NO2), Carbon monoxide (CO) and particulate matter (PM). The Air quality Index (AQI) is an index or a number used to characterize the quality of air at a given location. It is used for local and regional air quality reporting and management in many metropolitan or urban cities of the world. Aba is a commercial and industrializing urban city, South East of Nigeria. The multiple linear regression technique is used to estimate the air quality of the city at any given time. The model for the estimation was established as:

AQI = -24.87 + 0.17SO2 + 0.042NO2 + 1.68CO + 3.60PM

The Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) conducted on the model shows that the model is statistically significant and so, good as an estimating technique in that area. The major assumptions of the model were checked and none was found to have been violated.