Ad-hoc European Air-Quality API

[Deutsch]

One of the positive aspects of the current troubled times is the rapid betterment of the air quality in affected regions. As production goes down and home office up, emissions are rapidly falling, leading to better air quality for all. This is of special relevance to the current crisis, as various studies are finding correlations between strong Covid-19 impact and regional air quality issues[1] [12] [13][14], as well as postulating particulate matter (PM-10) as a possible disease vector[2] [3].

Current studies on Covid-19 and air quality mostly rely on satellite data[4] as being made available by the European Space Agency (ESA) via the Copernicus[5] program. Access to this data is openly available[6], allowing for implementation of simple viewers and analysis tools[7].

For those interested in a more terrestrial view on this topic, the API4INSPIRE[8] project has launched a new ad-hoc activity providing near real time access to the measurements from the Austrian Air Quality Measurement Network[9] via a simple OGC SensorThings API[10] Interface. The data being provided has been harvested from the air quality endpoints made available by Umweltbundesamt[11], the Austrian Environment Agency, whereby new measurement values are updated on an hourly basis. After Austria, air quality data for the rest of Europe was imported from the European Environment Agency https://www.eea.europa.eu/.

If you find our SensorThings API interesting, we’d be thankful if you could get in touch with us at API4INSPIRE@datacove.eu to share your experiences!

Here you can gain an overview of the available data via the Fraunhofer Web Genesis viewer:

https://wg-brgm.docker01.ilt-dmz.iosb.fraunhofer.de/servlet/is/121/

The data is available from the following SensorThings API endpoints:

https://airquality-frost.docker01.ilt-dmz.iosb.fraunhofer.de/v1.1/

http://service.datacove.eu/AirThings/v1.1/

We're still working on providing a tutorial on SensorThings API requests on our project wiki. Thus, we're additionally provide the link for an external reference page:

https://github.com/DataCoveEU/API4INSPIRE/wiki

https://developers.sensorup.com/docs/

A simple viewer using Open Layers is available at:

http://service.datacove.eu/AT_AIR/

If you’re interested in building your own application, you can use our viewer code as a start:

https://github.com/DataCoveEU/API4INSPIRE/tree/master/SensorThings%20API%20Viewer

European Location Interoperability Solutions for e-Government (ELISE) Action

This work is developed under the European Location Interoperability Solutions for e-Government (ELISE) Action, financed by Interoperability solutions for public administrations, businesses and citizens (ISA²) Programme.