A grouped spatial-temporal model for PM2.5 data and its applications on outlier detection.

Smog in China has been a major issue in recent years. As the main component of smog, PM 2.5 has received a lot of attention from the public, as the pollution caused by PM 2.5 is believed to have negative impacts in many aspects. Accordingly, modeling PM 2.5 concentrations has become research of interest for the sake of future prediction and control. Based on the data collected from monitoring stations nationwide, we find that PM 2.5 concentrations show both spatial and temporal dependency. In this paper, we adopt a grouped spatial-temporal model to depict the distribution of PM 2.5 , capturing the spatial heterogeneity in the patterns of PM 2.5 concentrations. An estimation method based on the EM algorithm is used since the group label assignment is unknown, and the results are further explained. Finally, an outlier detection procedure based on the grouped spatial-temporal model is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]