Green [8] described several types of designs that might be useful for detecting changes in means

associated with human activity. The simplest approach involves collection of data prior to the activity
and compares it with data after the activity. This corresponds to a before-after design (BA) (Figure 1a). In
some instances, there may be no or little data prior to the activity. For example, in the case of a
chemical spill, there may only be data on areas near the spill and most information is collected
subsequent to the spill. In some instances, the data that are collected are over a brief period (such as 12
monthly observations before and after). The typical approach to analysis is to treat the data as
independent samples and to compare the samples using a two-sample test. In other instances, there
may be considerable data. For example, with air pollution studies there may be daily measurements for
several years. The analyst may choose a more sophisticated methodology such as intervention analysis.
Any difference found in the analysis is attributed to the activity. However, causal inference is difficult for
this type of study since the data collected are observational and rely on a number of assumptions. For
the analysis to be valid, the change in the measurements must be due to the activity.