Traffic, wildfires, power plants, congestion. 92% of the world’s population is breathing dangerously polluted air, and it is an increasing problem in urban areas – but it is a tricky issue to solve. How do you know where to start and where to concentrate improvement efforts, if you don’t know precisely where – and what – the issues are? 

In recent years, advances in air quality sensors have made it possible to set up extensive and relatively inexpensive sensor networks, with hundreds of measurement points all over a city. This is a positive development, but it also leaves the city with quite a challenge in trying to process and understand the massive amounts of data flooding in. 

To address this, Ramboll has developed Shair - a cloud-based digital twin that tracks and visualises air quality. The platform combines statistical and physics-based modelling with measurement data, and builds on years of experience within air quality modelling and air quality transport patterns.

Shair gives the full picture of a city’s air quality status and challenges; this means that pollution hotspots and sources can be efficiently identified, so it becomes clear where and how to take action. 

The solution is hosted and scalable in the cloud, and can be made accessible via a web app. Instead of creating a one-off model for a given city based on historical data, Shair can keep pulling exact measurement data every hour, and combines it with other real-time data on, for example, traffic and meteorology. This makes it possible to map local-scale air quality across cities continuously and extract the relevant information. 

A solution with a sustainable impact 

While Shair can help improve present conditions, it is just as much a tool for the future. Having a comprehensive understanding of the developments and trends in air quality today makes it a lot easier to make future-proof decisions when planning and developing urban areas. 

Shair has recently been launched in the city of Richmond, to support the city’s efforts towards becoming a more sustainable city. 

“We’re excited to partner with Ramboll Shair to better understand air quality on a community scale. Richmond is committed to reducing community health disparities and improving the environment, and we need more information to better direct our resources and achieve our climate action goals”, says Adam Lenz, Environmental Services Manager in the City of Richmond. 

Depending on the needs of the city, it is also to possible to make information accessible to all citizens through an app for mobile devices. In this way, people can stay up to date on the air quality in their area and take preventive measures to avoid pollution hotspots in day-to-day situations. 

Julia Luongo, Managing Consultant within air quality and founder of Shair, gives an example: 

“I bike to work every day, and according to my GPS-system, the fastest route is on a major street. Using Shair, however, I can see that by changing my route and adding three minutes to my bike ride, I can reduce my pollution exposure significantly – so I’ll take another route to work.”