HomeDipNote: All Posts...New Air Quality Dashboard Uses AI to Forecast Pollution Levels

# 									New Air Quality Dashboard Uses AI to Forecast Pollution Levels							

DipNote

Office of Management Strategy and Solutions

Mary Tran

May 17, 2024

Growing up outside of Washington, D.C., I never paid attention to the air I breathed. Sure, things smelled different when we were driving in rush hour on I-95 versus when we were home in Mt. Vernon, but outside of that I didn’t spare the air much time. Fast forward to 2020, when I first joined the Department’s Greening Diplomacy Initiative, I was sent on my first temporary assignment to Mumbai for an air quality conference.

Usually, when I land after a long flight, the first thing I do is take a deep breath to anchor and connect myself to my new environment. But in those first moments experiencing beautiful India, I found myself struggling to take a breath or see through the thick fog of pollution hovering around me. It was a wake-up call that sparked my journey into understanding the intricacies of air quality and its impact on health, environment, and people around the world.

The Greening Diplomacy Initiative’s air quality program has been serving the Department since 2008. The first monitor was installed in Beijing ahead of the 2008 Summer Olympics and since then we’ve been able to install over 80 monitors across the agency, bringing air pollution data to our personnel and millions of people via our partnership with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its website airnow.gov.

**Calls for an App**

In 2018, we started getting calls from the field that while the air quality data was available, it wasn’t as accessible or immediate as people needed. They wanted to know when the air quality was improving or declining without having to log onto their computer to check the website. There was a plethora of apps. All of them were reporting something different from AirNow and each other and people didn’t know what to trust. They also wanted the ability to see host government data in a standard way.

Our office set out on a mission to bring the data to people’s fingertips. In 2020, we worked with the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs to develop the Department’s first air quality mobile application, ZephAir. The app has been downloaded over 42,000 times.

The app makes air quality information available using standard EPA methodology and health messaging. Users can quickly open an app on their phone to look at the data. They also can get push notifications to notify them when the air quality index changes categories in their selected locations so they can take action to protect their health.

But we didn’t want to stop there. There are still large gaps around the world in data availability and we did not have a transparent and trusted forecast to help with planning. We are excited to announce that thanks to a partnership with NASA, we now have a machine learning-based forecast that uses artificial intelligence for all cities that host a U.S. diplomatic mission worldwide.

**Partnering with NASA**

We worked with NASA to develop and integrate with ZephAir a forecasting system called CARES. Using historical, satellite, and model data outputs we are now able to develop a three-day air quality forecast for fine particulate matter (particles that are 2.5 microns or less in diameter). This provides simple, easy-to-understand forecasting similar to how one gets predictions from a weather app.

Users can now marry the information from our website with the accessible data they’ve come to rely on from ZephAir to better plan out their days based on our forecasting estimations. The dashboard, accessed here, also lets users analyze historical air quality data and compare data between different posts and cities.

The model uses inputs from NASA’s Goddard Earth Observing System Forward Processing system. It relies on a range of meteorological variables, aerosol information, and ground measurements from existing air quality monitors at our embassies and other locations around the world.

 

The initial rollout of this forecast includes not only locations that currently report real-time air quality data but also for cities without any reference-grade data available, providing a novel forecast for more than 290 cities that can be used to support health-based decision-making and widen the realm of data accessibility for those who need it most.

Forecasting functionality will be made available on the ZephAir mobile application in late 2024. Please note that like weather forecasts, these are predictions only and if real-time data is available, users should follow real-time information to take health precautions. The forecasts also do not include tropospheric ozone, or ground-level ozone, the other main air quality concern alongside fine particulate matter.

ZephAir mobile is available to the general public to download on both  iOS and Android phones.

*About the Author: Mary Tran is a Program Manager with the Greening Diplomacy Initiative in the Office of Management Strategy and Solutions.*

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Bureau of Global Public AffairsClimate and EnvironmentDipNoteEnvironmentGreening Diplomacy InitiativeOffice of Management Strategy and SolutionsScienceScience, Technology, and Innovation

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