Presenter: Christa Hasenkopf, PhD Co-Founder & CEO

1. Christa Hasenkopf, PhD
Co-Founder & CEO
christa@openaq.org
@Open_AQ
The OpenAQ Story:
Combining Open Data + Community
for Impact
Picture courtesy NASA
AIT Seminar
Bangkok, Thailand
6 March 2017

2. storyoutline
1: Air Inequality
2: Platform + Community
3: How to Get Involved

3. airinequality (1/3) Unequal access to clean air
1 out of 8 deaths are due
to air pollution (WHO, 2014)

4. airinequality (2/3)
WHO 2016 OAP Database + World Bank Data

5. airinequality (3/3)
LA
London
Mexico
City
Houston
Beijing
New
Delhi
Rio de Janeiro
# of papers for the
Top 10 = 41
‘Top 10’ Polluted Cities
1. Ahwaz, Iran
2. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
3. Sanadaj, Iran
4. Ludhiana, India
5. Quetta, Pakistan
6 Kermanshah, Iran
7. Peshawar, Pakistan
8. Gaborone, Botswana
9. Yasouj, Iran
10. Kanpur, India
Hasenkopf, et al. (2016)

6. knowledgegap
Ambient PM2.5 Levels ➔
RRofMortality➔ Lots of
Studies
(from
EU + US)
Fewer Studies +
Proxy Data
?
A simplistic adaptation from Burnett et al. (2014)

7. opendataimpact
7 out of 10
of the most cited large-cohort studies on
impact of air pollution on health in Web of
Science used open data provided by a
government source

8. Photo Credit: Lauren Knapp
Graphs from: openaq.orgUlaanbaatar, Mongolia: 2011-2013

9. opendataimpact
PM10 PM2.5
Beijing, China Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

10. opendatalandscape real-time, government
• ~70 Countries
• Ground monitoring
• PM2.5, PM10, SO2, NO2, CO, O3
• 5-8 million data points per day
• Disparate formats, some
temporarily exist

11. opendataempowers
Low-Cost
Sensors/Satellites
Public Health Policy + Research
Public Engagement
(e.g. apps)
Media
Educational Activities
Open,
Transparent
Standard Data
Layer
Disparate Public
AQ Data
Collected Across
the World

12. existingaggregators real-time, government
From: aqicn.org
No real-time, historical programmatic access
to physical air quality data at a station-level
with attribution back to source.

13. openaq
Open Source
Open RT + Historical Data +
Programmatic Access
Community-Driven

14. platformstructure
openaq.org

15. openaqfetch

16. An open data community + platform providing
programmatic, transparent, access to historical +
real-time air quality data in a universal format:
• PM10, PM2.5, BC, O3, CO, NO2, SO2
• government sources, research-grade sources
• 35,359,733 total measurements, ~200,000
added daily
• 4,700+ monitored stations in 43 countries
• All open-source! (github.com/openaq)
From: openaq.org

17. demotime

18. People Used the OpenAQ Platform and Wanted to Connect!
as of January 10, 2017
500,000
API Requests
in past 30 days
700+
Research orgs
have visited
140
Slack Channel
Members
Platform accessed by 1526 cities in 122 countries

19. opendataempowers
Low-Cost
Sensors/Satellites
Public Health Policy + Research
Public Engagement
(e.g. apps)
Media
Educational Activities
Open,
Transparent
Standard Data
Layer
Disparate Public
AQ Data
Collected Across
the World

20. policyapplications
Proposals: Open-Source alert system
that pushes out alerts via email or text,
usable in any city and for locally-
specified AQ levels (1-UNICEF)
Interest in using OpenAQ
platform to calculate faster
annual average values for cities
around the world.

21. researchactivities
>700 universities have accessed the
OpenAQ platform since August 2015.
Source: Google Analytics
Examples
Other: Researchers have included
OpenAQ as a component for proposals
for citizen science and satellite data
retrievals: 3 NASA; 1 NSF
Aerostate uses our platform as an input
to their AQ forecasting model. They also
test their model output against data
accessed from our platform.

22. educationalactivities
Mike Hannigan’s group at
Univ of Colorado have
developed an ‘open-source’
classes on low-cost sensors
+ open data (including from
OpenAQ).
Brown Univ students
decided upon using
the OpenAQ platform
for machine-learning
forecasting project.
Brandon Boor of Purdue
has his civ eng students
use OpenAQ platform
to do indoor AQ analysis
in different cities
around the world.

23. apps+chatbots
Amrit Sharma,
India
Developer
• App
• FB bot
www.facebook.com/smokeybot www.facebook.com/HawaBadlo

24. opensourcework
dolugen.github.io/openaq-
browser
Data Exploration Tool
Python pkg: py-openaq
github.com/dhhagan/py-openaq
R pkg: ropenaq
github.com/ropenscilabs/
ropenaq/
David Hagan
Boston, US
Ghem Eng
Grad Student
Dolugen Buraalda
Ulaanbaatar,
Mongolia
Software Developer
Maëlle Salmon
Barcelona, Spain
Statistician

25. mediawork

26. communitystatements

27. buildingconnections
On Slack: openaq-slackin.herokuapp.com/
On Twitter: @open_aq
On Medium: medium.com/@openaq
On GitHub: github.com/openaq/

28. openaqworkshops
Convene local communities to brainstorm
ways to use open data to fight air inequality.
• A great excuse for sectors working on
different aspects of fighting air
inequality to come together.
• Accomplish and add to OpenAQ
Community Wishlist – many
communities facing the same or
similar issues.
• Share other open-source tools and
effective practices to prevent
reinventing the wheel from place to
place.
Delhi OpenAQ,
Nov 2016
UB OpenAQ,
Nov 2015

29. communitywishlist
• Customizable, open-source public alert system à
email or text
• Open-source, instrument-independent alert system for
‘down’ equipment
• Wrapper that converts AQ
values to various AQI’s
• Open-source air quality app
• Statistical QA/QC analysis
of RT vs historical.

30. gettinginvolved
• Create or solve a GitHub Issue (or email us)
• Mention a new data source
• Better yet, write the code to grab that source!
• Help with the backend
• Hold a workshop or invite us to do a workshop
• Play with the data, the code, and other projects!
• Talk with us on Slack!

31. opendataempowers
Low-Cost
Sensors/Satellites
Public Health Policy + Research
Public Engagement
(e.g. apps)
Media
Educational Activities
Open,
Transparent
Standard Data
Layer
Disparate Public
AQ Data
Collected Across
the World

32. thankyou
• The entire OpenAQ Community!
Contact us: openaq.org | christa@openaq.org | @open_aq
• You, for your attention! (What ways can we collaborate?)
• Our organizational partners and sponsors