Air pollution sources apportionment in a french urban site

Marie Chavent (1, 2) , Hervé Guégan (3) , Vanessa Kuentz (1, 2) , Brigitte Patouille (1) , Jérôme Saracco (2, 4)

1 IMB - Institut de Mathématiques de Bordeaux
2 CQFD - Quality control and dynamic reliability
3 CENBG - Centre d'Etudes Nucléaires de Bordeaux Gradignan
4 GREThA - Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée

The development of air quality control strategies is a wide preoccupation for human health. In order to achieve this purpose, air pollution sources have to be accurately identified and quantified. This case study is part of a scientific project initiated by the French ministry of Ecology and Sustainable Development. Measurements of chemical composition data for particles have been realized on a French urban site. The work presented in this paper splits into two main steps. In the first one, the identification of the sources profiles has been reached thanks to Principal Component Analysis (PCA), followed by a rotation technique. Then, in the second step, a receptor modelling approach (using Positive Matrix Factorization as estimation method) allows to evaluate the apportionment of the sources. The results from these two statistical methods have enabled to characterize and apportion five sources of fine particulate emission.

Mots clés: Pollution data; Principal Component Analysis (PCA); Positive Matrix Factorization (PMF); rotation

Domaines: Applications [stat.AP]; Méthodologie [stat.ME]

Marie Chavent, Hervé Guégan, Vanessa Kuentz, Brigitte Patouille, Jérôme Saracco. Air pollution sources apportionment in a french urban site. Case Studies in Business, Industry and Government Statistics, 2007, 1 (2), pp.119-129. ⟨hal-00273137⟩