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Air pollution (AP) is a significant risk factor for public health, and its impact is becoming increasingly concerning in developing countries where it is causing a growing number of health issues. It is therefore essential to map and monitor AP sources in order to facilitate local action against them. This study aims at assessing the suitability of Sentinel-5 AP products based on Google Earth Engine (GEE) to monitor air pollutants, including CO, NO₂, SO₂, and O₃ in Arak city, Iran from 2018 to 2019. Our process involved feeding satellite images to a cloud-free GEE platform that identified pollutant-affected areas monthly, seasonally, and annually. By coding in the JavaScript language in the GEE, four pollution parameters of Sentinel-5 satellite images were obtained. Following that, images with clouds were filtered by defining cloud filters, and average maps were extracted by defining average filters for both years. The employed model, which solely used Sentinel-5 AP products, was tested and assessed using ground data collected from the Environmental Organization of Central Province. Our findings revealed that annual CO, NO₂, SO₂, and O₃ were estimated with RMSE of 0.13, 2.58, 4.62, and 2.36, respectively, for the year 2018. The annual CO, NO₂, SO₂, and O₃ for the year 2019 were also calculated with RMSE of 0.17, 2.41, 4.31, and 4.6, respectively. The results demonstrated that seasonal AP was estimated with RMSE of 0.09, 5.39, 0.70, and 7.81 for CO, NO₂, SO₂, and O₃, respectively, for the year 2018. Seasonal AP was also estimated with RMSE of 0.12, 4.99, 1.33, and 1.27 for CO, NO₂, SO₂, and O₃, respectively, for the year 2019. The results of this study revealed that Sentinel-5 data combined with automated-based approaches, such as GEE, can perform better than traditional approaches (e.g., pollution measuring stations) for AP mapping and monitoring since they are capable of providing spatially distributed data that is sufficiently accurate. Full article

Cities play a vital role in local development providing a high education level, specialized jobs and advanced services. When assessing living conditions and wellbeing in cities, economic indicators alone are generally unable to evaluate the inherent complexity of the ‘quality of life’ issue in urban environments. With rapid urbanization, shortage of infrastructures and services emerged in metropolitan regions of developing countries, leading to disadvantaged settlements, urban poverty, lower citizens’ satisfaction, and an overall decline in life quality. Based on these premises, the present study illustrates a subjective investigation of life quality in an emerging economy such as Iran, focusing on Arak, the fourth largest industrial pole of the country. Based on a literature review on quality of life in industrial cities of emerging economies, subjective indicators of citizens’ satisfaction on living quality in Arak were identified and quantified using empirical results from a field survey. Results of our study show that the overall satisfaction for living quality in Arak is rather low, reaching the lowest rank in the issues of environmental sanitation and public transportation. Lack of investments in urban infrastructure justifies the low citizens’ perception of life quality in Arak city. The paper concludes outlining the urgent need of homogeneous and comparable macro- and micro-data on multiple aspects of quality of life at both city-level and metropolitan-level in emerging economies. Full article