Transforming Open Urban Data into Infrastructure Supporting Air Quality Interventions

Abstract

Urbanisation has led to urban population growth affecting the economy and the environment, including degrading air quality via pollution. Air pollution has been linked to a variety of conditions and health risks including heart disease, stroke, asthma, Alzheimer's and neurodevelopmental disorders. However, it is difficult for a citizen to find precise air pollution data at a particular location. Smart City strategies usually stipulate that city councils should focus on delivering platforms for active citizen participation using existing technology. Existing civic data hubs such as the London Datastore, Open Data Bristol etc., provide air pollution data but lack elaborate representations for user-defined locations. Existing air quality initiatives such as the Smart Citizen platform and Sensor.Community provide more advanced graphical representations. However, they restrict themselves to showing data coming from their respective devices. The paper presents the Open City Air Quality Platform (OpenCAQP), a development that merges a wide range of data sources and air pollution parameters into a single platform. The OpenCAQP allows citizens, environmentalists, data analysts, and developers to access and visualise data. The proposed solution contributes to two key objectives: i) analysis of the air pollution data sources available in a city; ii) a replicable scalable, modular open source capability aggregating and visualising air pollution data from multiple sources. Its effectiveness has been evaluated by measuring quality, usability and increased awareness of users through a feedback questionnaire.