AIRNow

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General

Contact

Data System Name: AIRNow
Data System URL: http://www.airnow.gov, http:// www.airnowtech.org
Contact Person: John White, Tim Dye
Contact e-mail: white.johne@epa.gov, dye.tim@epa.gov

About the Data System (Purposes, Audience)

[[About::The U.S. EPA, NOAA, NPS, tribal, state, and local agencies developed the AIRNow Web site to provide the public with easy access to national air quality information. The Web site offers daily AQI forecasts as well as real-time AQI conditions for over 300 cities across the US, and provides links to more detailed State and local air quality Web sites The primary purposes of AIRNow are to 1) provide information to enable the public and others to take make health-based decisions, 2) provide information exchange and data access for local, tribal, state, and federal air quality agencies, and 3) provide real-time data to other research and operational data systems (NASA, NOAA, Universities, etc.).

• Main EPA web portal
• Technical portal into AIRNow Data Management Center that allows stakeholders to control their data, submit their forecasts, use the GIS Navigator, and monitor status of their data.
• Data and information distribution system that allows organizations to register and access the publicly available AIRNow data. Data can be accessed in text files (CSV format) and web services
• Monitoring system that shows the products developed by AIRNow and allows the AIRNow DMC and EPA staff to monitor the AIRNow system.
• Media- Shows examples of how the media are displaying and using information provided by the AIRNow program.
• Smog Stories - Shows output from a joint EPA-NASA pilot project to combine real-time air quality data and satellite images to develop informative stories for the media.
• Public communicators’ portal for contributing and exchanging information about public outreach programs throughout the U.S.]]

Presentation

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History

The roots of the AIRNow program go back to 1995 when the American Lung Association of Maryland developed ozone pollution maps that regularly appeared on television weather broadcasts in the Washington, D.C. area. Although very useful and informative to the public, the effort needed to produce these maps (data transfer, quality control, processing, etc.) was substantial and too costly to continue the following year. In the United States, air pollution problems tend to be regional in nature. Because ozone measurements collected by numerous state and local agencies were not centrally available for mapping, in 1997 EPA developed a regional Ozone Mapping System to automatically transfer data to a central location, perform data conversion and quality control, and generate animated ozone maps in near real-time. This system would be the starting point of AIRNow.

AIRNow expanded rapidly with funding from one of President Clinton’s eGovernment initiatives, EMPACT (Environmental Monitoring for Public Access and Community Tracking). The goal of EMPACT was to take advantage of new technologies for providing environmental information to the public in real time, including: 1) Collecting, managing, and distributing time-relevant environmental information and 2) Providing the public with easy-to-understand information they can use in making informed, day-to-day decisions. AIRNow was the largest and most successful EMPACT project. Funds from EMPACT enabled states to purchase new hardware and software needed to upgrade their data collection infrastructure and effectively participate in AIRNow.

Today the AIRNow program continues to grow to include other pollutants and meteorological data. State and local agencies find the AIRNow program to be a critical tool for protecting public health by providing their citizens with real-time air quality information.

Agencies

EPA

Datasets Served

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Parameters

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Spatial - Temporal Coverage

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Health

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Forecasting and Reanalysis

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Model/Emissions Evaluation

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Characterization, Trends, Accountability

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Other

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Data System IT

Primary/Official Store for Some data

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Data Consolidation/integration

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Providing Data Access to users/externals

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Data Processing

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Visualization/Analysis

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Decision Support (e.g. some integration into user business process)

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End-to-End Integration

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Other DS Values

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Data Access and/or Output Interoperability

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Reusable Tools and Methods

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Security Barriers and Solutions

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User Feedback Approach

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Other Architecture

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