title: Back-extrapolating a land use regression model for estimating past exposures to traffic-related air pollution.
abstract: Land use regression (LUR) models rely on air pollutant measurements for their development, and are therefore limited to recent periods where such measurements are available. Here we propose an approach to overcome this gap and calculate LUR models several decades before measurements were available. We first developed a LUR model for NOx using annual averages of NOx at all available air quality monitoring sites in Israel between 1991 and 2011 with time as one of the independent variables. We then reconstructed historical spatial data (e.g., road network) from historical topographic maps to apply the model's prediction to each year from 1961 to 2011. The model's predictions were then validated against independent estimates about the national annual NOx emissions from on-road vehicles in a top-down approach. The model's cross validated R2 was 0.74, and the correlation between the model's annual averages and the national annual NOx emissions between 1965 and 2011 was 0.75. Information about the road network and population are persistent predictors in many LUR models. The use of available historical data about these predictors to resolve the spatial variability of air pollutants together with complementary national estimates on the change in pollution levels over time enable historical reconstruction of exposures.
authors.affiliation: †Technion Center of Excellence in Exposure Science and Environmental Health, Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, 32000, Israel.
authors.forename: Ilan
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Levy
authors.affiliation: ‡Department of Geography, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 91905, Israel.
authors.forename: Noam
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Levin
authors.affiliation: †Technion Center of Excellence in Exposure Science and Environmental Health, Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, 32000, Israel.
authors.lastname: Yuval
authors.affiliation: §Department of Environmental Health, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts 02115-5810, United States.
authors.forename: Joel D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Schwartz
authors.affiliation: ∥Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health and Community Medicine, Jerusalem, 91120, Israel.
authors.forename: Jeremy D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Kark
mesh_terms: D000393:Air Pollutants / Q000032:analysis*; D000397:Air Pollution / Q000032:analysis; D004781:Environmental Exposure; D006801:Humans; D007557:Israel; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009589:Nitrogen Oxides / Q000032:analysis*; D012044:Regression Analysis; D001335:Vehicle Emissions / Q000032:analysis*
chemical_list: D000393:Air Pollutants; D009589:Nitrogen Oxides; D001335:Vehicle Emissions