AQUISS produces a simple and reliable 24-hour forecast of air quality for cities and urban agglomerations

With 70% of Europeans currently living in cities and citing air quality as one of their top ten environmental concerns, it is vital that individuals concerned about the health risks of pollution, as well as policy makers seeking to create safer cities have access to reliable air quality information.

For this very reason, the project Air Quality Information Services (AQUISS) is developing a new concept to deliver accurate and timely information on the state of the atmosphere for an urban agglomeration.

How does it work?

Currently funded under the European Union‘s flagship earth observation programme Copernicus, operated by the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and developed by Heich Consult GmbH, AQUISS produces a 24-hour forecast of air quality for cities and urban agglomerations based on freely available public open data sets and forecast services.

Combining existing data (CAMS Air Quality Forecast) using artificial neural networks and algorithms to recognise patterns in data in a similar way to how the human brain works, AQUISS obtains a reliable forecast with a high spatial resolution for a given area within a city and then presents its results in a format easily understood by the general public.

The overall purpose of the AQUISS application is to provide an ‘air quality information service as simple and reliable as a weather forecast’. The AQUISS methodology will deliver this to end users avoiding the need to have an infrastructure and complex dispersion models in place.

More:

To learn more about AQUISS or taking part in a pilot appication, please visit the webpage www.aquiss.eu or drop an mail at info@aquiss.eu