A Fuzzy Expression Way for Air Quality Index with More Comprehensive Information

• Main Authors: Yujie Wang, Mingxuan Zhao, Yulin Han, Jian Zhou
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2017-01-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: Air Quality Index; weighted arithmetic; fuzzy expression way; Gaussian fuzzy number
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/1/83

The Air Quality Index (AQI) is an evaluating indicator for the atmospheric environment released by various environmental monitoring centers to communicate the present air quality status to the public, which is calculated by the aid of the monitored concentrations of six common air pollutants and relevant computational formulae. Considering that the historical data of daily overall AQI illustrated by the traditional expression way merely contain limited information about the original data, this paper puts forward a more concrete and intuitive way to express the air quality in the past day. By analyzing the data concerning individual air quality indices of pollutants gathered from five cities of China for six consecutive months and conducting the curve fitting, each sub-index is recommended to be set as a Gaussian fuzzy number. Accordingly, taking advantage of the novel operational law for fuzzy numbers, the fuzzy distribution and membership function of the daily overall AQI can be deduced immediately, which as a reference contributes to the users acquiring the information more intuitively and facilitates making plans or decisions. Subsequently, a case study taking Shanghai as a background is conducted to elaborate the application of the proposed approach. Furthermore, the line chart reflecting the overall air quality status in a past period is depicted, based on which an example of selecting a tourist destination is given to demonstrate its utilization.