[Background] Public places are one of the high-incidence areas for smoking behavior, but currently lack real-time, accurate, and intelligent technology for monitoring and identifying smoking behavior. Therefore, it is urgently needed to explore and establish a predictive model for indoor smoking behavior in public places to improve the efficiency of smoking control supervision and law enforcement.
[Objective] To explore a predictive model for smoking behavior based on real-time online monitoring of PM2.5 concentration in indoor air in public places.
[Methods] Taking Pudong New Area in Shanghai as an example, six service places and four office places were selected using convenience sampling method from October to November 2022. One monitoring point was selected for each venue, and indoor PM2.5 and nicotine concentrations were continuously monitored for seven days. At the same time, outdoor PM2.5 concentration data for public places in Shanghai were obtained from the city's environmental monitoring stations during the same period. Mann-Whitney U test was used to compare indoor and outdoor PM2.5 concentrations, and Spearman rank correlation analysis was used to analyze indoor PM2.5 and nicotine concentrations. Additionally, a random forest model was applied to construct a predictive model for indoor smoking behavior based on indoor PM2.5 concentration data and video and image acquisition in public places.
[Results] The average indoor PM2.5 concentration in service places (97.5±149.3 µg/m3) was significantly higher than that in office places (19.8±12.2µg/m3) (P<0.001). Compared with the ambient PM2.5 concentration outdoors, the indoor/outdoor PM2.5 concentration ratio (I/O ratio) in service places ranged from 1.2 to 19.0, indicating a strong indoor PM2.5 pollution source. Furthermore, when compared with nicotine concentrations, it was found that the ranking of indoor PM2.5 concentration averages in 10 public places was consistent with the corresponding ranking of accumulated nicotine concentrations within a week (rs=0.969, P<0.001). Among them, the top three places ranked by indoor PM2.5 and nicotine concentration were internet cafe, Chess and card room, and KTV. In the case of internet cafe, indoor crowd smoking behavior videos and images collection were carried out for 7 days, and linkage effect analysis was conducted with real-time monitoring of PM2.5 during the same period. A random forest model was constructed, and it was found that the AUC of the PM2.5-based smoking behavior prediction model was 0.66 at the same time, and the AUC of the PM2.5 concentration prediction model four minutes after smoking behavior occurred was 0.72.
[Conclusion] The indoor PM2.5 concentration in public places is highly correlated with smoking behavior. Based on real-time indoor PM2.5 monitoring, a preliminary smoking behavior prediction model was constructed with high accuracy, providing a new approach for controlling smoking and law enforcement in public places.