Scientific evidence
Measurements, station and regional coverage, descriptive calculations, source records and stated limitations are the evidence available for review.
SCC Air Quality glossary
Definitions that improve access without removing technical meaning or uncertainty.
Terms used in SCC Air Quality reports
- AURN
- The Automatic Urban and Rural Network, the principal UK network of official automatic air-quality stations.
- Pollutant-day observation
- One station providing one valid daily value for one pollutant; it is not a person's exposure.
- Unique station-day
- One distinct station/date pair with at least one valid pollutant result; multiple pollutants at the same station on the same date still count as one unique station-day.
- Provisional data
- Official monitoring information that may change during quality assurance and ratification.
- Completeness
- The proportion of expected configured pollutant-days or measurements that were available and valid.
- Screening flag
- A preliminary observation for follow-up, not proof of an exceedance, cause, breach or health effect.
- Multiplicity adjustment
- Methods that reduce false discoveries when many statistical comparisons are considered.
- Validated join
- A record match that passed linkage checks; it does not prove source contribution or causation.
- WHO contextual reference
- A health-based guideline used for context, not automatically a UK legal compliance limit.
- Source attribution
- A conclusion about which source contributed to pollution; proximity alone cannot establish it.
Scientific evidence and software assurance are different
Engineering assurance
Automated checks confirm that the pipeline followed its declared rules. They do not constitute peer review, accreditation, regulatory approval or institutional endorsement.