Statistical Modeling and Evaluation of Air Quality Impact due to COVID-19 Lockdown

Abstract

COVID-19 has been a harsh reality impacting the worldwide population but resulting lockdown has shown a positive impact on the quality of air. The case study for India has been considered for statistical modeling and evaluation of the air quality amid pandemic. According to World Economic Forum, India had 6 out of 10 world's most polluted cities. The highest pollution level used to be around 900 in the extreme cases and sometimes beyond the measurable scale. According to WHO, anything above 25 is marked unsafe. When all the commotion was put to halt during lockdown, the AQI surprisingly fell below 20. On 3rd April 2020, i.e., just after a week of lockdown, the AQI at one of the stations in Delhi was measured 19 and that was a huge positive impact on environment. Spatial graph, bar-charts, time-series plots and boxplots have been incorporated for the analysis. Hypothesis testing proves that the lockdown has resulted in significant improvement in the level of polluting elements. This validates that tweaking daily activities can help maintaining the air-quality.