Author(s)

Egide Ndamuzi^1,2, Rachel Akimana², Paterne Gahungu³, Elie Bimenyimana⁴

¹Doctorate School of the University of Burundi, Bujumbura, Burundi.
²Department of Physics, University of Burundi, Bujumbura, Burundi.
³Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London, London, UK.
⁴Climate and Atmosphere Research Centre (CARE-C), The Cyprus Institute, Nicosia, Cyprus.

Air pollution is a result of multiple sources including both natural and anthropogenic activities. The rapid urbanization of the cities such as Bujumbura, economic capital of Burundi, is one of these factors. The very first characterization of the spatio-temporal variability of PM_2.5 in Bujumbura and the forecasting of PM_2.5 concentration have been conducted in this paper using data collected during a year, from August 2022 to August 2023, by low-cost sensors installed in Bujumbura city. For each commune, an hourly, daily and seasonal analysis was carried out and the results showed that the mass concentrations of PM_2.5 in the three municipalities differ from one commune to another. The average hourly and annual PM_2.5 concentrations exceed the World Health Organization standards. The range is between 28.3 and 35.0 μg/m³. In order to make a prediction of PM_2.5 concentration, an investigation of Recurrent Neural Networks with Long Short-Term Memory has been undertaken.

Particulate Matter, Recurrent Neural Networks, Calibration

Ndamuzi, E. , Akimana, R. , Gahungu, P. and Bimenyimana, E. (2024) Modeling and Characterization of Fine Particulate Matter Dynamics in Bujumbura Using Low-Cost Sensors. Journal of Applied Mathematics and Physics, 12, 256-267. doi: 10.4236/jamp.2024.121020.