The Challenge
Providing the public with timely, understandable air quality information requires collecting and processing enormous volumes of environmental data from monitoring agencies across the United States and around the world.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) needed a reliable national system capable of receiving air quality observations in near real time, quality controlling the incoming data, and transforming complex information into clear maps and forecasts that decision-makers, the media, and the public could use to understand current air quality conditions and associated health risks.
Our Solution
Spheros Environmental has supported the development, operation, and enhancement of EPA’s AirNow air quality data system since 2002.
As manager of the AirNow Data Management Center, Spheros provides year-round operational support for a system that receives air quality data every hour from more than 150 air quality agencies around the world. The team performs quality control on incoming data and applies air quality science, meteorology, and data analysis to help transform those observations into useful information.
Spheros meteorologists and data scientists use the collected data and Air Quality Index (AQI) to produce easy-to-understand maps and forecasts that communicate current conditions and potential health risks. The team’s work has also included data management, visualization, forecasting, public outreach, software development, and the creation and operation of websites and applications.
Spheros also worked with EPA to develop AirNow-International, a stand-alone version of the AirNow system designed to expand access to air quality information beyond the United States.
Air Quality Data System Development and Operations Consultant
Results +What makes this unique
AirNow has become the United States’ national source for real-time air quality data and forecasts, providing air quality conditions for more than 400 cities across the country. Spheros’ long-term involvement has provided continuity across the system’s development, daily operation, and ongoing enhancement.
The project brings together air quality science, meteorology, data management, quality control, forecasting, visualization, software development, and public communication within a single national-scale environmental information system. The AirNow-International platform has further extended this work globally, beginning with its successful implementation in Shanghai, China, for the 2010 World Expo.
More than two decades of continuous support demonstrate Spheros’ ability to not only develop sophisticated environmental data systems, but also operate and evolve them over the long term to deliver reliable, accessible information to agencies, decision-makers, the media, and the public.
Project Experts
