Air Quality as Proxy for Assesment of Economic Activity

Abstract

In Ukraine most of citizens and economic activity are concentrated over urban city centers and city functional areas. Thus, Air Quality and, in particular, levels of fine particulate matter (e.g., PM2.5 and PM10) over cities can be a proxy for assessment of economic activity and density of city populations. Since the russia invasion to Ukraine started on 24 of February 2022 according to UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency) 8 million refugees from Ukraine have now been registered across the Europe. Almost 7 million more are displaced within the country. On the other hand, there is no official statistics from national statistical service showing current influence of invasion on city economic activity or inhabitants amount. Thus, such a proxy can be used to see current situation by analyzing of particulate matter time series. In this work we compare averaged annual cumulated PM2.5 for 2018-2021 years with values for 2022 and estimate the correlation them with publicly available statistics on migration to see some relations. Global Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicator 11.6.2, "Annual mean levels of fine particulate in cities (population weighted)" is being extended for 2022 and compared with previous years.