EarthSense win £350,000 government grant for air quality software

EarthSense has won a £350,000 grant from the government’s innovation agency, Innovate UK, to develop air quality software for local authorities and the general public.

Called LiVETAP (Live Visualisation of Emissions — Towards Informed Avoidance of Pollution Hotspots), the project brings together EarthSense with two partner universities and Wolverhampton City Council to deliver an advanced demonstrator.

The project will create air quality apps and a web portal for local authorities and the general public. These services will provide air quality forecasts to guide decisions on traffic management and routing in polluted environments.

The services will be developed on EarthSense’s air quality datasets which take into account traffic pollution sources, weather conditions and government pollution monitoring sites, where they exist.

It will also use real-time data from air quality sensors including the EarthSense Zephyr installed around Wolverhampton, which will record levels of pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and fine particulate matter (PM2.5).

For the first time, the services will enable users in Wolverhampton to see both live and forecast pollution data for city centre streets and school-run routes.

EarthSense Managing Director, Tom Hall said: ‘Using the information from the app, users can choose to avoid certain high pollution areas, reducing the amount of emissions inhaled, and hopefully divert traffic away from those areas, thereby reducing the levels of pollution — a positive result for everyone.’