Air Quality Assessment of Ontario Using an Open Source Decision Support System

Data marts and Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) tools support specialized form of analysis. They are widely used when analytical navigation of the data is required. In this study a data mart has been created, "Air Quality Data Mart for Ontario Canada" using OLAP tool. The study conducts a case study which presents comparisons of air quality between the urban and rural areas, peak and non-peak hours, working days and weekends and pattern analysis of ground level ozone (O₃) and particulate matter (PM _2.5) for various cities in Ontario. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the functionality of the data mart by extracting the data across several dimensions. Analysis of the results indicates that the data mart has the ability to roll up, drill down, dice and slice the data across several dimensions. The results are compared against the Canadian Environmental Sustainability Indicator (CESI) to further corroborate the results achieved by the air quality data mart.