PUI2017 Extra Credit Project Proposal
Seasonal Trends of Air Quality Health Index of Hong Kong  <Isha Chaturvedi, ishacusp, ic1018>
Problem Description:
Air pollution is an important topic in Hong Kong due to growing concerns about the health impacts of deteriorating air quality. This study will analyse the question that whether air pollution levels changes with different seasons or not. Further it will address the air quality level across different areas in Hong Kong to account for the urban pulse factor in the air quality level.  Lastly, the results will be linked back to the health risk associated with air pollution levels in different seasons .  
 Data: 
To conduct the study, monthly AQHI data of last 5 years across different stations provided by EPD  of Hong Kong will be used\cite{aqhi}.  This data is open-source and can be fetched from Environmental Protection Department of HKSAR website. The data reports AQHI, which is on a scale of 1 to 10 and 10+. The AQHIs are reported both hourly for 16 different stations across Hong Kong.  These AQHIs are grouped into 5 health risk categories : low, moderate, high, very high, serious. For this study, the hourly data will be clubbed to construct monthly data. The 12 months will be divided into 4 separate seasons of Hong Kong. There is an anticipation that the date column in the AQHI data will require processing, as only the first row of every hour has the date of the corresponding day for which AQHIs are measured. Further, some of the AQHIs are reported in '3+' string format. To address this, these levels will be transformed into integer values, by down scaling the level (by removing '+' from the reported level).
 Analysis:
A KS test (along with the p test) and chi-squared test will be conducted to study differences in the distribution of AQHIs across different seasons. Further, air quality levels for last 5 years for different stations across different months (showing different seasons) will be visualized.
References:
For this study, two major previous literature works on seasonal variation of air pollution were studied :  1) seasonal variation of air pollution index (Hong Kong Case study)\cite{sciencedirect} and 2) relationship between intraseasonal variations of air pollution and meteorological variables in Hong Kong\cite{kong}. The study 1 has picked up a particular station - Causeway bay instead of including all the stations. This stations is chosen as it is one of the busiest and most crowded areas in Hong Kong. The second study has included 14 important stations and made a comparison between 2010 and 2011. 
 Deliverable:
The deliverable of this study will be statistical conclusion and graphical visualizations depicting air quality trends across seasons and stations and the associated health risks in Hong Kong.