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Module ? Unhealthy: Nearly everyone will begin to experience health effects when AQI values are
4 between 151 and 200. Members of sensitive groups may experience more serious health

effects.

? Very Unhealthy: AQI values between 201 and 300 trigger a health alert, meaning everyone may
experience more serious health effects.
9-12 December, 2013 5 population is more likely to be affected.
? Hazardous: AQI values over 300 trigger health warnings of emergency conditions. The entire

Data analysis
To this point, you have walked through the process of obtaining data and developing indicators and

indices. The importance of all of this work now culminates as we review the process of how to analyze
the information you have obtained and packaged. The following section will review aspects of non-
spatial and spatial analysis of data. You may wish to refer to Module 7 for further information about
physical product outcomes as it considers in a more in-depth presentation and communication of the

IEA report.

Non-spatial analysis includes performance evaluation, along with trend, correlation and graphical

analysis. Also included is the presentation of indicators using symbols. This is followed by a review of
spatial analysis using GIS.

5.1 Non-spatial analysis

Performance evaluation

Indicators become especially useful when they can be interpreted in the context of performance.
Distance to a specified target is a common way of measuring performance. These measures also
promote accountability to policy-makers, particularly when policies are linked to environmental
performance. The latter is of increasing interest, as seen by the release of the Environmental

Performance Index in 2006.

Baselines, thresholds and targets are ways of measuring changes in the system compared with previous
states or future desired states. Baselines allow us to monitor either positive or negative changes in a

system, based on the initial state of the system. It is important that baseline information is present at
the beginning of a project to monitor changes over time. Thresholds allow us to monitor activities that
may result in negative activities; the AQI discussed above has a threshold of 151, beyond which most
people will experience health impacts.

74 Monitoring, Data and Indicators