Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic started last semester when I was starting on my proposal. At that time, the pandemic lockdowns were at their peak levels with strict restrictions against movements. This was the case in most countries across the world. The effect this had on the air pollution was immediately felt. There were negligible amount of flights and road traffic had also significantly reduced. This led to an amazing clearing of the skies of pollution. For the first time in years, the Himalayan mountains could be seen, and many cities saw their smog and blanket of air pollution disappear. At that point I decided to use the change in air pollution data as the basis for my research. Now in the second semester, lockdowns have been almost lifted all across the world and pollution has re-emerged to pre pandemic lockdown levels. In this research I look at the data for two major gulf cities, Abu Dhabi and Dhahran, Saudi Arabia and investigate the change in pollution data over the past years. The end goal was to estimate whether or not there has been a significant decrease in air pollution levels in both cities over time due to the implementation of lockdowns, which severely restricted industrial production, vehicular pollution, and other forms of man-made emissions. The data collected was then cleaned and variables that were unnecessary were removed. Then I applied Regression analysis onto the data and the results showed evidence of the fact that initiating lockdowns decreased overall pollution levels in the atmosphere, as human activity was severely restricted.

Publication Date

12-2020

Document Type

Master's Project

Student Type

Graduate

Degree Name

Professional Studies (MS)

Department, Program, or Center

Graduate Programs & Research (Dubai)

Advisor

Sanjay Modak

Advisor/Committee Member

Boutheina Tlili

Campus

RIT Dubai

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