Transferability and Generalizability of Regression Models of Ultrafine Particles in Urban Neighborhoods in the Boston Area

Land use regression (LUR) models have been used to assess air pollutant exposure, but limited evidence exists on whether location-specific LUR models are applicable to other locations (transferability) or general models are applicable to smaller areas (generalizability). We tested transferability and generalizability of spatial-temporal LUR models of hourly particle number concentration (PNC) for Boston-area (MA, U.S.A.) urban neighborhoods near Interstate 93. Four neighborhood-specific regression models and one Boston-area model were developed from mobile monitoring measurements (34–46 days/neighborhood over one year each). Transferability was tested by applying each neighborhood-specific model to the other neighborhoods; generalizability was tested by applying the Boston-area model to each neighborhood. Both the transferability and generalizability of models were tested with and without neighborhood-specific calibration. Important PNC predictors (adjusted-R2 = 0.24–0.43) included wind speed and direction, temperature, highway traffic volume, and distance from the highway edge. Direct model transferability was poor (R2 < 0.17). Locally-calibrated transferred models (R2 = 0.19–0.40) and the Boston-area model (adjusted-R2 = 0.26, range: 0.13–0.30) performed similarly to neighborhood-specific models; however, some coefficients of locally calibrated transferred models were uninterpretable. Our results show that transferability of neighborhood-specific LUR models of hourly PNC was limited, but that a general model performed acceptably in multiple areas when calibrated with local data.