---
title: "RAQSAPI - Objectives of the RAQSAPI package"
author:
- affiliation: |-
    "United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA),
        Region III,
        Air and Radiation Division,
        Air Quality and Analysis Branch"
  name: Clinton Mccrowey
output:
  rmarkdown::html_vignette: default
lang: en-US
#csl: acs-nano.csl
subtitle: RAQSAPI Purpose
abstract: RAQSAPI is an add-on package for the R programming language and
  environment (hereafter referred to as simply "R") that connects R to a U.S.
  EPA database for the retrieval of ambient air pollution data. This document
  is intended to state the purpose of creating RAQSAPI.
vignette: >
  %\VignetteIndexEntry{RAQSAPI - Objectives of the RAQSAPI package}
  %\VignetteEncoding{UTF-8}
  %\VignetteDepends{knitr}
  %\VignetteDepends{rmarkdown}
  %\VignetteEngine{knitr::rmarkdown}
bibliography: AQSAPI.bib
csl: acs-nano.csl
---

```{r setup, include = FALSE}
knitr::opts_chunk$set(
  collapse = TRUE,
  comment = "#>"
)
```
# The Air Quality System (AQS)  
The Clean Air act [@cleanairact] requires all federal, state, local and tribal
air pollution control agencies monitor ambient air for concentrations of certain
air pollutants. Codified in 40 CFR Part 58 are the statutory requirements for
these monitoring programs, including monitoring network technical requirements,
operating schedules, data certification, data submittal and archiving
requirements. In addition to the required air pollution and meteorological
monitoring, pollution control agencies often perform additional and/or voluntary
air monitoring.

* The three objectives of ambient air monitoring programs as stated in 40 CFR
Part 58 Appendix D.1 are as follows:
    + Provide air pollution data to the public in a timely manner;
    + Support compliance with ambient air quality standards and emissions
        strategy development; and
    + Support for air pollution research studies.

As required by 40 CFR Part 58, air pollution and meteorological data is
submitted to the United States Environmental Protection Agency along with
associated metadata and quality assurance metadata via EPA's Air
Quality System (AQS)[@AboutAQSdata].

## About AQS Data Mart
AQS Data Mart is a publicly accessible mirror of data stored on the AQS database
designed to make air monitoring data more accessible and useful to the technical
community, scientific community and the general public. Data on AQS is copied to
AQS Data Mart once per week and this data is made available to the public
through web-based applications and APIs (application programming interface)
[@AQSDataMartWelcome]. RAQSAPI functions use the APIs provided by AQS Data Mart
to retrieve data.

<!-- # The R programming language -->
<!--  The R language and it's environment [@website:whatisR] (Hereafter referred to -->
<!--  as simply R) is a domain-specific programming environment that is inspired by -->
<!--  the S statistical language and it's respective environment which was developed -->
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<!--  License](https://www.r-project.org/COPYING) (GNU GPL) [@website:whatisR]. -->

<!-- ## Why R? -->
<!--  The R environment is available for most of the major computer operating -->
<!--  systems - Windows, unix and \*nix-like platforms such as Solaris, GNU\\Linux, -->
<!--  \*BSD, Darwin-derived platforms such as Mac OS X and other POSIX and POSIX-like -->
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<!-- * The design of the R statistical programming environment makes it a great -->
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<!--       import data from external sources. -->
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<!--       and Atom. -->
<!--   + R has a large set of operators for performing calculations on arrays and -->
<!--       tabular data sets. -->
<!--       a.  A functional programming style that makes it easy to apply a single -->
<!--       operation on large data sets. -->
<!--   + Tools for graphical output of data such as knitr and rmarkdown for creating -->
<!--   reports, esquisse and ggplot2 creating graphs, openair for creating windroses. -->
<!--   Rshiny for a web interface. -->
<!--   + Linear and non-linear modeling tools. -->
<!--   + R has hooks into many popular software packages used for geospatial analysis. -->

<!--   These tools make R an excellent environment to perform statistical analysis on -->
<!--   ambient air monitoring data. -->
  
# Benefits of using RAQSAPI
RAQSAPI package for R is a easy to use R package that allows
anyone using the R programming environment to retrieve data from AQS Data Mart
Database vi the exposed API interface using a set of functions with consistent
input variables, function names and output structure. RAQSAPI does not require
installation of software or drivers external to R. The goal of RAQSAPI is to
make a package which eases retrieving of ambient air monitoring data from AQS
Data Mart.

* Some possible uses of the RAQSAPI package
  + Can be used as part of a monitoring agency's data validation process
  + RAQSAPI can be used for data retrieval as part of quality management of air
      data
  + Ambient air monitoring data retrieval for Design value calculations
  + To retrieve ambient air pollution concentrations
    * Useful for retrieving ambient background air pollution data needed model
        to perform air quality dispersion modeling
  + Data retrieval for automation of Network Analysis
  + Statistical analysis of ambient air data
  + Compare ambient air pollution concentrations from different air monitoring
      sites.
  + Data retrieval to generate quarterly/audit reports
  
# References