Overview (First Page)

Column 1

Data sources: us_aqi_historical.rdata, asthma-hospitalization-rates-by-county-2015_2022.csv

As climate change accelerates, its downstream effects become much clearer such as declining biodiversity, shifting populations, and more frequent extreme weather.Wildfires are one of the most visible consequences, especially in states like California and Texas, which have often led the country in number of wildfires and total acres burned. Other than the size and frequency of the fires, California has over 2.1 million homes at high risk of wildfire damage over 1 million more than the next state down.

However, property damage isn’t the only threat. Another consequence of the wildfires are the increases in local air pollution, resulting in an increased AQI that often follow in these cities. These can have lasting effects on the health of individuals, especially on the respiratory system. Thesse spikes in AQI are consistently linked to increased rates of asthma prevalence and increased hospitalizations due to asthma and other respiratory incidents.

The two main data sources are the us_aqi_historical data, containing daily AQI values for different cities across California from 1980 to 2022. This data set was cut to only include 2015 for the asthma analysis and the AQI values were averaged by city and weighted based on population. The next data set is asthma hospitalizations per county from 2015 to the present. The hospitalization rates are age-adjusted per 10,000 residents. When conducting the analysis, the AQI data had to be combined to be per county due to the asthma data being by county.This dashboard will highlight the highest risk cities, along with the correlation seen between AQI and asthma=related hospitalizations.

Results: The first figure shows a geographical representation of the top 10 cities with the highest weighted mean AQIs. One pattern of notice between the cities is that a majority of the top 10 are either more south and closer to the equator, where it’s warmer, or more inland, away from the ocean, where it’s hotter and dryer. Additionally, these cities are all adjacent to large forests or forested areas, where due to the proximity, forest fires would affect their AQI more significantly.

The second figures correlates the mean AQI of counties with their associated asthma hospitalizations. While not a strong positive one, there is a correlation between higher AQIs and higher asthma hospitalizations. Some of the cities of note are Fresno, with a mean AQI of 93.5 and average asthma hospitalization of 6.4, and Los Angeles with a mean AQI of 117 and asthma hospitalization rate of 5.1.

Overall, we can see the correlation between an increased mean AQI and the asthma hospitalization rates

Column 2