B0832
Title: EEAaq: An R package to handle air quality data from the European environmental agency data portal
Authors: Paolo Maranzano - University of Milano-Bicocca & Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (Italy) [presenting]
Riccardo Borgoni - University of Milano-Bicocca (Italy)
Agostino Tassan Mazzocco - University of Milano-Bicocca (Italy)
Abstract: EEAaq is presented, an R package developed to download, manage and analyze air quality data at the European level from the European Environment Agency (EEA) dataflows. EEAaq addresses several issues: (1) the EEA air quality download system and the metadata retrieving are not practical and flexible for non-professionals; (2) direct collection of data from the agency's portal requires heavy data manipulation; (3) air quality conditions in Europe are continuously raising considerable interest from researchers and technicians involved in policy evaluation. EEAaq package provides the users with nine functions, which can be re-grouped into three categories according to their goal: 1) download, 2) summarize and aggregate data, and 3) build static and dynamic maps. The download functions allow the users to specify either LAU or NUTS-level zone information, a specific shapefile, or a list of coordinates representing the area for which to retrieve the respective air quality data. The summary functions allow for the computation of descriptive statistics, data information, and time aggregation. The mapping functions aim to represent the monitoring stations and to build spatial interpolation maps. The software (release 0.0.1) is freely available on the R CRAN since June 2023.
