airVLC: An Application for Visualizing Wind-Sensitive Interpolation of Urban Air Pollution Forecasts

Air pollution has been identified as a major source of health problems for people living in cities. In this sense, it is important to identify the areas of the city that present high levels of pollutants in order to avoid them. airVLC is an application for predicting and interpolating real-time urban air pollution forecasts for the city of Valencia (Spain). We compare different regression models in order to predict the levels of four pollutants (NO, NO
₂
, SO
₂
, O
₃
) in the six measurement stations of the city. Since wind is a key feature in the dispersion of the pollution, we study different techniques to incorporate this factor in the models. Finally, we are able to interpolate forecasts all around the city. For this goal, we propose a new interpolation method that takes wind direction into account, improving well-known methods like IDW or Kriging. By using these pollution estimates, we are able to generate real-time pollution maps of the city of Valencia and publish them into a public website.