Over 50 million street-level air quality data measurements released by Dublin City Council and Google as part of Project Air View.
Dublin City Council through the Smart Dublin programme today launched the results of Google’s Project Air View initiative, which measured the air quality of Dublin City’s streets over a period of 16 months. The project was delivered in partnership with the City Council, with data captured by Google’s first electric Street View car equipped with Aclima’s mobile air sensing platform. Launched by the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Caroline Conroy and Minister of State at the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, Ossain Smyth at the Mansion House today, this data is now openly available to the public to support further research, and to increase awareness of air quality levels across Dublin.
The mapped, street-by-street air quality data is a first for an Irish city, and provides unique insights that will enable the Council, businesses and citizens to work collaboratively to improve air quality for Dublin. The data will also be used by the City Council to help inform current and future environmental and climate policies, and planning efforts.
All data is now available to view on Google’s Environmental Insights Explorer and on Smart Dublin’s open data platform, while a 3-day air quality data hackathon will take place in Google Ireland from the 24-26th February (https://airqualitydatahack.com/)
Speaking at the launch of the data in the Mansion House this morning, Lord of Mayor of Dublin, Caroline Conroy said: “Knowing the status of Dublin’s air quality and its impacts on city life and health, are very important. This project captured over 50 million air quality measurements at 5 million locations across the city with the car covering over 30,000 kms distance. Project Air View is enabling new insights into air quality across the streets of Dublin. Having these local insights is just the beginning of the journey, we now need to explore the findings and use them to help improve the lives and health of Dubliners.”
The project determined levels of six pollutants such as Particulate Matter (PM 2.5), Nitric Oxide (NO), Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2), Carbon Monoxide (CO), Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and Ozone (O3) in the air. When benchmarked against the provisions of the EU Air Quality Standards 2011, overall, the Capital’s air quality is good. This is confirmed in the results from Project Air View. However, as this data captures street-level insights, for the first time, it is possible to visualise the variability of air quality levels across Dublin. For example, the streets along the quays on either side of the River Liffey in the City Centre show relatively elevated NO2 levels compared to other streets which could be higher, on account of the congestion levels on these quays.