Original scientific paper
Published in: Holistic Approach Environ. 6(2016) 3, pp. 103 – 116
Paper reference number: HAE-126
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APPLICATION OF MULTIDIMENSIONAL STATISTICAL METHODS FOR THE AIR QUALITY EVALUATION IN THE VICINITY OF A STRATEGIC PLANT

Miriam Andrejiová^*, Zuzana Kimáková^*, Miriama Piňosová^*, Ružena Králiková^*

^* Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Technical University of Kosice, Slovak Republic

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ABSTRACT

The worsening condition of the environment on various levels of devastations in various regions negatively shares both the health of the population and the general quality of the entire ecosystem. The air pollution is the cause of hundreds of thousands of deaths of Europeans per year and millions of people in the world. At present we are breathing the air polluted by the power industry, the traffic, the waste disposal or the agriculture. The monitoring of the environment is one of the important tools detecting the state of the environment. Only the complex monitoring of the environment system enables the objective knowledge of the state of the environment basic components influenced by human being as well as the real establishment of the development tendencies and the effective measures improving the state of the environment. This paper deals with the air quality assurance applied through the selected multidimensional statistical methods in the vicinity of the important plant in the East Slovakia. In the analysis of the air quality were applied methods: method of principal components analysis, cluster analysis and the multidimensional comparison methods. The level of the air quality was described by five contaminations substances: CO, SO₂, NO₂, O₃ and PM₁₀. The monitored areas have a low level of air polluted by air quality index. The results of the cluster analysis indicated that three monitored areas (Veľká Ida, Sokoľany and Seňa) have similar characteristics of selected air quality indicators and they are forming one cluster. The results of the multidimensional comparison methods pointed to the fact that locality Veľká Ida is the area with the highest air pollution.

Keywords: air quality, principal components analysis, cluster analysis, multidimensional comparison method
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