Detecting Elevated Air Pollution Levels by Monitoring Web Search Queries: Algorithm Development and Validation.

Background: Real-time air pollution monitoring is a valuable tool for public health and environmental surveillance. In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in air pollution forecasting and monitoring research using artificial neural networks. Most prior work relied on modeling pollutant concentrations collected from ground-based monitors and meteorological data for long-term forecasting of outdoor ozone (O), oxides of nitrogen, and fine particulate matter (PM).