importMeta: Import monitoring site meta data for UK and European networks

In davidcarslaw/openair: Tools for the Analysis of Air Pollution Data

Import monitoring site meta data for UK and European networks

Description

Function to import meta data for air quality monitoring sites. By default, the function will return the site latitude, longitude and site type, as well as the code used in functions like importUKAQ(), importImperial() and importEurope(). Additional information may optionally be returned.

Usage

importMeta(source = "aurn", all = FALSE, year = NA, duplicate = FALSE)

Arguments

source	One or more air quality networks for which data is available through openair. Available networks include: "aurn", The UK Automatic Urban and Rural Network. "aqe", The Air Quality England Network. "saqn", The Scottish Air Quality Network. "waqn", The Welsh Air Quality Network. "ni", The Northern Ireland Air Quality Network. "local", Locally managed air quality networks in England. "imperial", Imperial College London (formerly King's College London) networks. "europe", European AirBase/e-reporting data. There are two additional options provided for convenience: "ukaq" will return metadata for all networks for which data is imported by importUKAQ() (i.e., AURN, AQE, SAQN, WAQN, NI, and the local networks). "all" will import all available metadata (i.e., "ukaq" plus "imperial" and "europe").
all	When all = FALSE only the site code, site name, latitude and longitude and site type are imported. Setting all = TRUE will import all available meta data and provide details (when available) or the individual pollutants measured at each site.
year	If a single year is selected, only sites that were open at some point in that year are returned. If all = TRUE only sites that measured a particular pollutant in that year are returned. Year can also be a sequence e.g. year = 2010:2020 or of length 2 e.g. year = c(2010, 2020), which will return only sites that were open over the duration. Note that year is ignored when the source is either "imperial" or "europe".
duplicate	Some UK air quality sites are part of multiple networks, so could appear more than once when source is a vector of two or more. The default argument, FALSE, drops duplicate sites. TRUE will return them.

Details

This function imports site meta data from several networks in the UK and Europe:

• "aurn", The UK Automatic Urban and Rural Network.

• "aqe", The Air Quality England Network.

• "saqn", The Scottish Air Quality Network.

• "waqn", The Welsh Air Quality Network.

• "ni", The Northern Ireland Air Quality Network.

• "local", Locally managed air quality networks in England.

• "imperial", Imperial College London (formerly King's College London) networks.

• "europe", Hourly European data (Air Quality e-Reporting) based on a simplified version of the {saqgetr} package.

By default, the function will return the site latitude, longitude and site type. If the option all = TRUE is used, much more detailed information is returned. The following metadata columns are available in the complete dataset:

• source: The network with which the site is associated. Note that some monitoring sites are part of multiple networks (e.g., the AURN & SAQN) so the same site may feature twice under different sources.

• code: The site code, used to import data from specific sites of interest.

• site: The site name, which is more human-readable than the site code.

• site_type: A description of the site environment. Read more at https://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/networks/site-types.

• latitude and longitude: The coordinates of the monitoring station, using the World Geodetic System (https://epsg.io/4326).

• start_date and end_date: The opening and closing dates of the monitoring station. If by_pollutant = TRUE, these dates are instead the first and last dates at which specific pollutants were measured. A missing value, NA, indicates that monitoring is ongoing.

• ratified_to: The date to which data has been ratified (i.e., 'quality checked'). Data after this date is subject to change.

• zone and agglomeration: The UK is divided into agglomeration zones (large urban areas) and non-agglomeration zones for air quality assessment, which are given in these columns.

• local_authority: The local authority in which the monitoring station is found.

• provider and code: The specific provider of the locally managed dataset (e.g., "londonair").

Thanks go to Trevor Davies (Ricardo), Dr Stuart Grange (EMPA) and Dr Ben Barratt (KCL) and for making these data available.

Value

A data frame with meta data.

Author(s)

David Carslaw

See Also

the networkMap() function from the openairmaps package which can visualise site metadata on an interactive map.

Other import functions: importADMS(), importAURN(), importEurope(), importImperial(), importTraj(), importUKAQ()

Examples

## Not run: 
# basic info:
meta <- importMeta(source = "aurn")

# more detailed information:
meta <- importMeta(source = "aurn", all = TRUE)

# from the Scottish Air Quality Network:
meta <- importMeta(source = "saqn", all = TRUE)

# from multiple networks:
meta <- importMeta(source = c("aurn", "aqe", "local"))

## End(Not run)

davidcarslaw/openair documentation built on June 11, 2025, 10:27 p.m.