1 research outputs found
Evaluation of Land Use Regression Models for NO<sub>2</sub> and Particulate Matter in 20 European Study Areas: The ESCAPE Project
Land use regression models (LUR)
frequently use leave-one-out-cross-validation
(LOOCV) to assess model fit, but recent studies suggested that this
may overestimate predictive ability in independent data sets. Our
aim was to evaluate LUR models for nitrogen dioxide (NO<sub>2)</sub> and particulate matter (PM) components exploiting the high correlation
between concentrations of PM metrics and NO<sub>2</sub>. LUR models
have been developed for NO<sub>2</sub>, PM<sub>2.5</sub> absorbance,
and copper (Cu) in PM<sub>10</sub> based on 20 sites in each of the
20 study areas of the ESCAPE project. Models were evaluated with LOOCV
and “hold-out evaluation (HEV)” using the correlation
of predicted NO<sub>2</sub> or PM concentrations with measured NO<sub>2</sub> concentrations at the 20 additional NO<sub>2</sub> sites
in each area. For NO<sub>2</sub>, PM<sub>2.5</sub> absorbance and
PM<sub>10</sub> Cu, the median LOOCV <i>R</i><sup>2</sup>s were 0.83, 0.81, and 0.76 whereas the median HEV <i>R</i><sup>2</sup> were 0.52, 0.44, and 0.40. There was a positive association
between the LOOCV <i>R</i><sup>2</sup> and HEV <i>R</i><sup>2</sup> for PM<sub>2.5</sub> absorbance and PM<sub>10</sub> Cu.
Our results confirm that the predictive ability of LUR models based
on relatively small training sets is overestimated by the LOOCV <i>R</i><sup>2</sup>s. Nevertheless, in most areas LUR models still
explained a substantial fraction of the variation of concentrations
measured at independent sites