Danish geolocation app Geme.io has expanded its scope to provide real time, localised information on pollution and air quality.
Geme.io, a free smart city geolocation app aimed at connecting users to their urban environment, has been granted access to the EU’s Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service (CAMS), which gathers data from the Copernicus Earth observation satellite programme on air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, solar energy and climate forcing. Geme.io will use timely, accurate datasets provided daily by CAMS to update its users on regional levels of air quality; with information updates integrated into its virtual map.
Magdalena Pawlowicz, one of the app’s co-founders, said: “Our mission is to allow users to take the necessary, preventive actions to avoid air pollution by electing alternative street routes or not going to a park, for example, if dust (particulate matter) is overly prevalent. Individual interviews with mums in kindergartens indicate there is a need for cities to educate citizens on air pollution; and a car with a running engine – [for example] an ice cream truck or dad waiting in the car in front of the kindergarten – surprised many responders as something that was actively creating air pollution.”
Geme.io’s research team conducted surveys of parents of young children in eight cities across the USA, UK and Nordic regions in order to determine levels of concern around urban air pollution. 94% of the mothers surveyed expressed high concern over air pollution in their region, but 89% said they did not know whether their child’s kindergarten was in a highly polluted area.
The developers of the geolocation app are working in partnership with university researchers to create an algorithm which will enable them to augment the Geme.io’s map and air pollution data with updates on projected traffic congestion, drawing on information regarding planned street cleaning, waste collection and transport on- and offloading.
