Application of machine learning and deep learning techniques in modeling the associations between air pollution and...

Tehran, the most crowded city in Iran, suffers from severe air pollution, particularly during the cold months. This research endeavored to examine the statistical relationships between criteria air pollutants (CO, NO₂, SO₂, O₃, PM₁₀, and PM_2.5) and meteorological elements (temperature, rainfall, wind speed, relative humidity, air pressure, sunshine hours, solar radiation, and cloudiness), as well as assess and compare the efficacy of six different algorithms (multiple linear regression (MLR), generalized additive model (GAM), classification and regression trees (CART), random forest (RF), gradient boosting machine (GBM), and deep learning (DL)) in modeling pollutants and climatic factors responsible for variations in Tehran's air pollution levels from 2001 to 2021 using R 4.3.2 software. The results of this study showed that O₃ was strongly affected by weather conditions, while other pollutants were mainly influenced by each other than by meteorological parameters and more extensive research is required to pinpoint the precise impact of human activity on these pollutant levels in Tehran. Also based on the predictive model performance evaluation and concerning the principle of parsimony, in half of the cases, the MLR outperformed other models, despite its seeming simplicity and principal assumptions dependence. In other situations, the GAM was a good substitute.