International Society for Bayesian Analysis

The UPTECH project aims to link health measurements to air pollution in order to quantify the impact of air quality on the health of primary school children in South-East Queensland, Australia. Due to the costs and time constraints of health and air quality measurements, a panel design with random school selection has been employed, with measurements being taken for two weeks at each of 25 of the 188 state primary schools in the Metropolitan School District. The school data will be augmented by continuous monitoring data recorded by three Environmental Protection Agency monitoring sites. One component of the UPTECH project is the development of a spatio-temporal model of ultrafine particle number concentration (PNC). This semi-parametric regression model will be used to quantify the effects of meteorology, temporal trends and background levels at each site and across all sites so that predictions of ultrafine PNC can be made outside the two week measurement period at each school. These predictions will be used to approximate the exposure to ultrafine particles of the children whose health outcomes have been measured as part of UPTECH.