The evaluation of emission control to PM concentration during Beijing APEC in 2014

Abstract Several statistical methods are performed in this study to evaluate the effect of emission control measures on particulate matter (PM) concentrations during the 2014 Asia–Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit held in Beijing. The concentration of PM 2.5 is reduced by 30%, 38% on a year-on-year and month-on-month basis during the APEC emission control period while PM 10 reducing by 41% and 26% respectively. Considering from the impacts of the weather circulation types, PM 2.5 and PM 10 are both reduced by 34%. ANN model is considered to be appropriate with the ability of characterising non-linear phenomena. In this work an ANN model is built to predict the daily averaged PM concentrations. Comparing the observed PM concentrations and the predicted value which are forecasted by ANN model on condition that no emission control measures were carried out during the APEC, the reductions for PM 2.5 and PM 10 are 24%, 28% respectively. All these results suggest that strict emission control measures push down the pollution level effectively, and more observed data with long time could improve the accuracy of evaluation results. More stringent controls of regional emissions should be lasted for the continuous improvements of air quality in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.