Spatiotemporal interpolation of air pollutants in the Greater Cairo and the Delta, Egypt

This paper analyses the spatiotemporal variability of air pollutants in Egypt using monthly averages from the air quality monitoring network from 2011 to 2015. Particulate Matters (PM10) Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) and Sulfur Dioxide (SO2), measured by the monitoring stations network are studied. A log transformation is applied for the three pollutants to achieve normality. The sum-metric function is utilized for modelling the spatiotemporal variogram as it gave the smallest Mean Squared Error (MSE) compared to other forms namely separable, metric, and product sum models. Therefore, employing the gstat package in R together with the trans-Gaussian spatiotemporal kriging, the maps are generated for the interpolated surfaces for the monthly averages of 2015 and the corresponding standard error values. These maps will help the decision maker to understand and visualize the spatial and temporal variability of the measured pollutants and hence undertake the necessary policies and decisions. The results show that the down town area has the highest pollutants levels. As concerns the temporal dimension, the highest values are depicted during the month of February as compared to the rest of the year. Furthermore, Egypt is suffering from a serious PM10 problem for the area and period under study that extremely exceed the WHO and Egyptian guidelines.