Forecasting Hazard Level of Air Pollutants Using LSTM’s

The South Asian countries have the most polluted cities in the world which has caused quite a concern in the recent years due to the detrimental effect it had on economy and on health of humans and crops. PM 2.5 in particular has been linked to cardiovascular diseases, pulmonary diseases, increased risk of lung cancer and acute respiratory infections. Higher concentration of surface ozone has been observed to have negatively impacted agricultural yield of crops. Due to its deleterious impact on human health and agriculture, air pollution cannot be brushed off as a trivial matter and measures must be taken to address the problem. Deterministic models have been actively used; but they fall short due to their complexity and inability to accurately model the problem. Deep learning models have however shown potential when it comes to modeling time series data. This article explores the use of recurrent neural networks as a framework for predicting the hazard levels in Lahore, Pakistan with 95.0% accuracy and Beijing, China with 98.95% using the time series data of air pollutants and meteorological parameters. Forecasting air quality index (AQI) and Hazard levels would help the government take appropriate steps to enact policies to reduce the pollutants and keep the citizens informed about the statistics.