A Hybrid ARIMA and Artificial Neural Networks model to forecast air quality in urban areas: case of Tunisia

Forecasting air quality time series represents a very difficult task since air quality contains autoregressive, linear and nonlinear patterns. Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) models have been widely used in air quality time series forecasting. However, they fail to detect extreme events because of their presumed linear form of data. Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) models have proved to be promising nonlinear tools for air quality forecasting. A hybrid model combining AREVIA and ANN improved forecasting more than either of the models used independently. Experimental results with meteorological and Particulate Matter data indicated that the combined model can be used as an efficient forecasting and early warning system for providing air quality information towards the citizen, not only in Sfax Southern Suburbs but in other Tunisian regions that suffer from poor air quality conditions.