DOI: 10.5061/dryad.79cnp5hwq
title: Uncertainty in health impact assessments of smoke from a wildfire event

description: Manuscript abstract: Wildfires cause elevated air pollution that can be
 detrimental to human health. However, health impact assessments associated
 with emissions from wildfire events are subject to uncertainty arising
 from different sources. Here, we quantify and compare major uncertainties
 in mortality and morbidity outcomes of exposure to fine particulate matter
 (PM2.5) pollution estimated for a series of wildfires in the Southeastern
 U.S. We present an approach to compare uncertainty in estimated health
 impacts specifically due to two driving factors, wildfire-related smoke
 PM2.5 fields and variability in concentration-response parameters from
 epidemiologic studies of ambient and smoke PM2.5. This analysis focused on
 the 2016 Southeastern United States wildfires suggests that emissions from
 these wildfires had public health consequences in North Carolina. Using
 multiple methods based on publicly available monitor data and atmospheric
 models to represent wildfire-attributable PM2.5, we estimate impacts on
 several health outcomes and quantify associated uncertainty. Multiple
 concentration-response parameters derived from studies of ambient and
 wildfire-specific PM2.5 are used to assess health-related uncertainty.
 Results show large variability and uncertainty in wildfire impact
 estimates, with comparable uncertainties due to the smoke pollution fields
 and health response parameters for some outcomes, but substantially larger
 health-related uncertainty for several outcomes. Consideration of these
 uncertainties can support efforts to improve estimates of wildfire impacts
 and inform fire-related decision-making.
description: READ ME for 'Uncertainty in health impact assessments of
 smoke from a wildfire event' by Megan M. Johnson and Fernando Garcia
 Menendez contact: f_garcia@ncsu.edu
 Data included in this folder are described below.
 AQS MONITORS: <br> Daily PM2.5 observations were obtained
 from the U.S. EPA's Air Quality System. These .csv files include
 monitor observations for all monitors in a given Southeastern state in a
 given year. Naming format: 'STYYYY_PM25.csv,' where
 'ST' is the postal abbreviation of the state, and
 'YYYY' is the year. States include AL, GA, NC, SC, TN, and VA.
 Years include 2012-2016. <br> -AQS data can be obtained from:
 https://aqs.epa.gov/aqsweb/documents/data_api.html
 HRRR-SMOKE FORECASTS: <br> Hourly November 2016 model
 results from the NOAA HRRR-NCEP-Smoke model (experimental) are in a netCDF
 format, converted from the archived GRIB2 format by the NOAA degrib
 program. HRRR-Smoke netCDFs are organized in compressed folders by
 forecast date and time. Folder naming format: 'YYYYMMDDHH' where
 'YYYY' is the year, 'MM' is the month, 'DD'
 is the day, and 'HH' is the hour of the forecast. Within the
 folder, files are named with the format: 'wrfnat_hrconus_HH.nc'
 where 'HH' is the hour of the forecast. Most days have two
 forecast times (00 and 12). At the time of analysis, data was unavailable
 for some dates and/or forecast times.<br> -More information on the
 model and archived forecasts can be found at
 https://rapidrefresh.noaa.gov/hrrr/HRRRsmoke/. <br> -The NOAA degrib
 program can be downloaded from:
 https://vlab.noaa.gov/web/mdl/degrib-download HYSPLIT
 SMOKE FORECASTS:<br> Archived surface smoke products were obtained
 from the NOAA NCEI Archive Information Request System (AIRS). When
 decompressed, the files are in a GRIB2 format. File naming format:
 '9950_NDGD_LXQ_YYYYMMDD.tar,' where 'YYYY' is the
 year, 'MM' is the month, and 'DD' is the day of the
 forecast.<br> -More information on the smoke forecasting system can
 be found at: https://www.arl.noaa.gov/hysplit/smoke-forecasting/<br>
 -Current surface smoke forecasts can be found at:
 https://airquality.weather.gov/<br> -Archived smoke forecast
 products can be obtained from:
 https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/has/HAS.StationYearSelect?datasetname=9950_01&subqueryby=STATION&applname=&outdest=FILE&dtypesort=dtypeord&stationsort=id BENMAP OUTPUT:<br> Example raw output from BenMAP-CE (v1.5.8). These .csv files include health impact estimates for multiple concentration-response functions for a single spatial smoke field. File names begin with the spatial smoke field used to estimate the health impacts. Estimates included here are aggregated within BenMAP-CE at the state level. Each row includes an impact estimate for a state using the identified concentration-response function. Details on the file format can be found in the BenMAP-CE user manual at https://www.epa.gov/benmap/benmap-ce-manual-and-appendices. Selected column headers are detailed below. BenMAP-CE can be downloaded from https://www.epa.gov/benmap/benmap-downloads.<br> -Col: State FIPS code<br> -Row: County FIPS code (1 if aggregated for entire state)<br> -Endpoint: Specific health outcome category of health impact estimate<br> -Author: Study author of concentration-response function used for health impact estimate<br> -Point Estimate: Health impact estimate<br> -Delta: Annual 24-hr average PM2.5 concentration used to estimate health impact<br> -Percentile 2.5 and Percentile 97.5: used to define the 95% confidence interval on the impact estimate