Page 12 - Case study: Air quality management in Southern California, USA
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It was quite innovative and important to provide a tool at the regional level that allows regulators
to identify and assess environmental issues in real‐time and to determine their impact on the
communities.
The air quality and weather stations already have wireless connectivity technologies installed in
them, so the key factor was to connect them to the Envirosuite ́s platform in order to allow for data
to be sent.
The aforementioned real‐time air quality and actual weather data is then processed in the cloud
using machine learning techniques and converted into an easy‐to‐understand output.
The Envirosuite platform resides in Amazon Web Services infrastructure which is replicated in
several parts of the world, so it provides high availability and reliability due to service guarantees.
The key limiting factor in a solution of this type is the reliability of the devices in the field, which are
managed carefully by the agencies in this case.
2.3. Results
The system allows air quality control agencies in California to respond promptly to incidents and
complaints. The outputs of these intelligent systems are used by the authorities to detect pollution
sources and adopt immediate actions and elaborate plans in order to reduce air pollution and move
towards a more sustainable model. Time and labour related to complaints management are also
reduced as manual and expensive analysis of data are no longer required to support investigations.
The project directly contributes to air quality management at the region level including the cities in
it.
The project is still in its implementation phase, so the results will come in the following years. The
projected impacts are indicated below:
• Social Impact: Better air quality will have positive impacts on citizens ́ health and wellbeing,
increasing life expectancy. Air quality may also play a role in determining housing prices as
locations with cleaner and better air quality are often more marketable than areas that have
been heavily polluted.
• Economic Impact: It is expected that the sanitary costs related to illnesses coming from air
pollution will decrease as mitigation policies are implemented and improved. Manual analyses of
air quality incidents and complaints are significantly reduced resulting in operational efficiencies
in the form of cost savings. Companies will also be more involved in formulating Corporate Social
Responsibility policies, taking care of their employees, which also means keeping an eye on the
environmental conditions they live in. Clean air can also be a determining factor for a company
to decide whether it should settle in a more polluted area or move to a cleaner area.
• Environmental Impact: The positive environmental impact is very clear in terms of having
cleaner air, not only for the inhabitants but also for vegetation in the region. Vegetation is the
6 Air quality management in Southern California| California, USA