PM2.5 concentration prediction during COVID-19 lockdown over Kolkata metropolitan city, India using MLR and ANN models

Kolkata is the third densely populated city of India and Kolkata stands in the World's 25 most polluted cities along with 10 worse polluted cities in India. The relevant study claims that due to the imposition of lockdown during COVID-19 pandemic, the atmospheric pollution level has been significantly reduced over the metropolitan city Kolkata like other cities of the world. The main objective of this study is to predict the concentration of PM2.5 using multiple linear regression (MLR) and artificial neural network (ANN) models and similarly, to compare the accuracy level of two models. The concentration of PM2.5 data has been obtained from state pollution control board, Govt. of West Bengal and daily meteorological data have been collected from the world weather website. The results show that non-linear artificial neural network model is more rational compared with multiple linear regression model due to its high precision and accuracy level (in respect to RMSE, MAE and R2). In this research artificial neural network (ANN) model exhibited higher accuracy during the training and testing phases (root mean square error (RMSE), mean absolute error (MAE) and R2 indicate 3.74, 1.14 and 0.91 respectively in training phase and 2.55, 4.32 and 0.69 in testing phase respectively). This model (ANN)) can be applied to predict the concentration of PM2.5 during the execution of urban air quality management plan