Date of Award

2022-12-01

Degree Name

M. S. Environmental Engineering

Department

Civil Engineering

Advisor(s)

Wen-Whai Li

Abstract

SARS-CoV-2, also known as COVID-19, was discovered in Wuhan, China in late 2019and spread rapidly worldwide in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic and its quarantine periods influenced the number of people using their vehicles and the number of miles traveled, which correspondingly influenced the air quality of urban areas. The influence of the restrictions caused by the quarantine period on air quality differs from location to location. Previous research accounted for countries, but no research was done at the state level individually. This research attempts to evaluate the transportation-related air quality during the COVID-19 pandemic period using data from the Texas Air Monitoring Information System from four cities in Texas (Austin, San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas-Fort Worth) from 2015 to 2021 for PM2.5 concentrations and area meteorology. The concentrations were evaluated using time series, boxplots, and Welch's unpaired t-test for near-road stations and urban stations. PM2.5 concentrations were found to increase in 2020 for Houston's near-road station CAMS 1052, but no significant differences were found for all other near-road stations in the other three cities. However, there was a significant increase in PM2.5 in all of the urban stations in all four cities overall. This suggests that the COVID-19 quarantine period did affect the concentration of PM2.5 in the four major cities in Texas.

Language

en

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Size

110 p.

File Format

application/pdf

Rights Holder

Marcos Alan Banda Morales

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