Mobile app helps Hongkongers to plan out less-polluted route
First-of-its-kind system powered by ‘big data’ pinpoints locations down to rooms in a building
Hong Kong scientists are developing a mobile app that will provide users with personalised information to identify and map out their own routes to avoid heavily polluted areas when navigating the city.
The first-of-its-kind modelling system and app powered by “big data” will give residents the ability to predict and assess real-time air quality and related health risks down to specific locations, from individual streets to rooms in a building.
The veteran air scientist behind the project said detailed and personalised analysis to such extents would enable people to make more informed decisions about minimising their risk of exposure to harmful air pollution.
“The objective is to show people what they should be most concerned about,” said Professor Alexis Lau Kai-hon of the University of Science and Technology, project coordinator of the “Personalised Real-Time Air Quality Informatics System for Exposure-Hong Kong”.
It will be a world first. Lau said such precise information was lacking in most air quality and pollution indices around the world, including Hong Kong’s own air quality health index, which he helped develop.
Hourly measurements of key air pollutants such as particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide and ozone will be analysed and the data plugged into a system. This data and other variables are then put through models to produce both real-time and near-future emissions readings and health risks.