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Analyzing COVID-19 Impacts on Vehicle Travels and Daily Nitrogen Dioxide (NO 2 ) Levels among Florida Counties

Author

Listed:
  • Alican Karaer

    (Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32310, USA)

  • Nozhan Balafkan

    (StormGeo Inc., 5011 Bergen, Norway)

  • Michele Gazzea

    (Department of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, 5063 Bergen, Norway)

  • Reza Arghandeh

    (Department of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, 5063 Bergen, Norway)

  • Eren Erman Ozguven

    (Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32310, USA)

Abstract

The COVID-19 outbreak and ensuing social distancing behaviors resulted in substantial reduction on traffic, making this a unique experiment on observing the air quality. Such an experiment is also supplemental to the smart city concept as it can help to identify whether there is a delay on air quality improvement during or after a sharp decline on traffic and to determine what, if any, factors are contributing to that time lag. As such, this study investigates the immediate impacts of COVID-19 causing abrupt declines on traffic and NO 2 concentration in all Florida Counties through March 2020. Daily tropospheric NO 2 concentrations were extracted from the Sentinel-5 Precursor satellite and vehicle mile traveled (VMT) estimates were acquired from cell phone mobility records. It is observed that overall impacts of the COVID-19 response in Florida have started in the first half of the March 2020, two weeks earlier than the official stay-at-home orders, and resulted in 54.07% and 59.68% decrease by the end of the month on NO 2 and VMT, respectively. Further, a cross-correlation based dependency analysis was conducted to analyze the similarities and associated time lag between 7-day moving averages of VMT and NO 2 concentrations of the 67 counties. Although such reduction is unprecedented for both data sets, results indicate a strong correlation and this correlation increases with the identification of a time lag between VMT and NO 2 concentration. Majority of the counties have no time lag between VMT and NO 2 concentration; however, a cluster of South Florida counties presents earlier decrease on NO 2 concentration compare to VMT, which indicates that the air quality improvements in those counties are not traffic related. Investigation on the socioeconomic factors indicates that population density and income level have no significant impact on the time lag between traffic and air quality improvements in light of COVID-19.

Suggested Citation

  • Alican Karaer & Nozhan Balafkan & Michele Gazzea & Reza Arghandeh & Eren Erman Ozguven, 2020. "Analyzing COVID-19 Impacts on Vehicle Travels and Daily Nitrogen Dioxide (NO 2 ) Levels among Florida Counties," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(22), pages 1-17, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:13:y:2020:i:22:p:6044-:d:447470
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Editorial, 2020. "Covid-19 and Climate Change," Journal, Review of Agrarian Studies, vol. 10(1), pages 5-6, January-J.
    2. Steve Cicala & Stephen P. Holland & Erin T. Mansur & Nicholas Z. Muller & Andrew J. Yates, 2020. "Expected Health Effects of Reduced Air Pollution from COVID-19 Social Distancing," NBER Working Papers 27135, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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    Cited by:

    1. Truong, Dothang, 2021. "Estimating the impact of COVID-19 on air travel in the medium and long term using neural network and Monte Carlo simulation," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    2. Kishan Mahmud & Dinesh Panday & Anaas Mergoum & Ali Missaoui, 2021. "Nitrogen Losses and Potential Mitigation Strategies for a Sustainable Agroecosystem," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-23, February.

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