PRAISE-HK

Empower the Public with Personalized Air Quality Information

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New App Helps Users Reduce Air Pollution Exposure Health Risk

An innovative mobile app powered by PRAISE-HK provides practical solutions to lower personal exposure and health risk to air pollution in Hong Kong. It combines groundbreaking technologies including artificial intelligence (AI) and big data, sensor technologies, air quality modelling systems and exposure science.  The app let users get real-time and forecasted information up to 48-hour on outdoor air quality in Hong Kong down to street level. This information can help people (esp. sensitive groups, athletes) with personalized information to plan ahead their activities and map out their own routes to refrain from heavily polluted areas. 

We aware that the 16 air quality monitoring stations (AQMS) operated by the Environmental Protection Department provide ambient air quality information at district levels for public reference. However, the city’s air quality actually varies a lot at street level due to multiple factors including:

  1. Release of air pollutants from nearby and far away emission sources e.g. human-related sources like vehicles and ships, power plants, industrial plants, residential and commercial buildings, natural sources like storms and forest fires, etc.
  2. Transportation of pollutants by winds from one place to another
  3. Other meteorological factors like temperature, sunshine, and rainfall that affect the photochemical transformation of the air pollutants
  4. Urban morphology affects the dispersion and ventilation of air pollution in the city.

PRAISE-HK takes into account a broad range of aforementioned data and then computes the level of air quality by linking two air quality modelling systems - (1) CMAQ (Regional Emissions) and (2) ADMS and MATsim (Local Urban Morphology & traffic statistic) to create a state-of-the-art air quality forecasting system for Hong Kong.

For the next phase, the upgrade of the app provides personal air pollution exposure tracking both indoor and outdoor so it can evaluate how much pollutant an individual is getting from its daily travel routes.

By 2021, the upgrade of the app will cover personalized alerts and recommendations tailored to users’ health conditions and daily habits.

Impacts

  1. At a personal level, PRAISE-HK App enables users (especially users with chronic illnesses or respiratory problems) to make informed decisions (through picking a cleaner route, or a cleaner activity time and location) to reduce personal exposure and health risk from harmful pollutants.
  2. At the community level, citizens can identify pollution hotspots and influence the decision-making process (e.g. relocating bus stops or advocating for changes in loading time or locations, to reduce exposure for vulnerable groups). We are grateful to see the increasing use of PRAISE-HK data by different community groups, such as:
    • The Hong Kong Asthma Society
    • Energizing Kowloon East Office's MyKE App
    • Red Cross Hong Kong's RCDP App
    • Blue Sky Technology Co. Ltd's client notification system
  3. At the public policy level, PRAISE-HK would provide evidence for advocating changes in some key policy sectors, such as the building sector (for better indoor air quality), urban planning sector (for improving urban ventilation), and the transport sector (for managing traffic emissions).
    • PRAISE-HK was featured in Hong Kong Environment Bureau report Clean Air Plan for Hong Kong 2035 published in June 2021 showcasing the Government's support and the coming plan to adopt the PRAISE-HK idea in the development of a district-based air quality information system for Hong Kong.

 

Phase 1 App features (available on app stores)

PRAISE-HK App Features

Launching Ceremony 2019

Media Coverage