Modification of AQI as an Effective Representation of Air Quality by Considering Weighting Factors

Controversy persists because residents in regions where air quality is poor are always dissatisfied with the presentation of the air quality index (AQI). To make management policies acceptable, it needs to be determined whether adding the various weighting factors can make the AQI more reasonable and practical. The authors selected three indices i.e. AQI, revised air quality index (RAQI), and the air-dispersion AQI (ADRAQI) to compare their results in different atmospheric situations and to determine whether the AQI was made more reliable by adding various weighting factors such as multi-air pollutants and air dispersion derived from the mean function and an entropy function. Results show in comparison to AQI, the RAQI and ADRAQI have greater values in the multi-air pollutant and poor dispersion events, leading to a great difference between single air pollutant and multi-air pollutant events. The eclipsed phenomena in the AQI for the means of diseases related to air pollution such as acute atopic conjunctivitis, other chronic allergic conjunctivitis, other atopic dermatitis and related conditions, contact dermatitis and other eczema, and unspecified causes clearly appear. The findings suggest that the representation of AQI can be modified by considering the weighting factors of multiple air pollutants along with air dispersion; these can easily be applied to similar regions elsewhere.