Addressing air quality challenges: Comparative analysis of Barcelona, Venezuela, and Guayaquil, Ecuador.

This study presents a willingness-to-pay (WtP) questionnaire that was designed, validated, and applied to assess perceptions of air quality and self-reported health in two middle-income South American cities: Barcelona and its neighboring cities (Venezuela) and Guayaquil (Ecuador). These cities lack air quality monitoring and control measures. The questionnaire is a reliable tool to assess air quality based on citizens' perceptions, and the results reveal that both populations perceive low air quality and accurately identify emission sources and air pollutants (industrial emissions and particulate matter in Barcelona and vehicular emissions and carbon monoxide in Guayaquil).

PM exceedances and source appointment as inputs for an early warning system.

Between June 2018 and April 2019, a sampling campaign was carried out to collect PM, monitoring meteorological parameters and anthropogenic events in the Sartenejas Valley, Venezuela. We develop a logistic model for PM exceedances (≥ 12.5 µg m).