Air quality communities

1

Hello,

I just found out about sensor.community today. Pretty cool, thinking about contributing. Got a general question about sensor.community and similar projects.

There’s a project called OpenAQ. To me it seems, this project has very similar goals, they also provide a map with a pollution overview. I am curious how these two projects compare. Why would I choose one project over the other? And, is there any exchange of data between the two?

Just trying to understand similarities and differences here.

Cheers

2

Hi,

It seems that they are aggregating Purple Air and official stations.
The main difference is that it is a commercial project.
SC is free and we answer on every canal. We are real people :slight_smile: devoted to help others. It is the reason why you should participate. And actually I don’t understand if OpenAQ is offering a sensor system.
I have already tried to contact OpenAQ without success.
They are free to use our data and contact us…

3

Hello! Full disclosure, I work for OpenAQ.

That being said, I’d like to answer your question and provide some context as to what OpenAQ is and is not.

OpenAQ is a non-profit organization, and OpenAQ is also an air quality data platform. In this platform, air quality data is aggregated and provided free for anyone to use. Meaning, we do not own any of the data, nor do we own any sensors. We simply show all the air quality data both from reference-grade monitors and “low-cost” air sensors in a one-stop platform, independent of the manufacturer or owner. All these data are harmonized and aggregated so that they are shown in one format on one platform. We provide them in different data products: (1) API, (2) Archive (via AWS S3 bucket), (3) Explorer (GUI-based with a map, search function, etc). We’ve also developed a command line interface as well as wrappers for different languages like Python. You can learn more about all of these at: docs.openaq.org

We recognize the value of many platforms and data providers, such as sensor . community, which is a valuable platform for sensor makers, professionals, and enthusiasts. I see these venues as complementary, and one platform may be more suitable for a use case compared to another use case – it really depends on your needs as a data user or as a data provider. For example, some locations have sensors in sensor . community that are not yet in OpenAQ, or that have more granular data in sensor.community but have only 1-hour data in OpenAQ. If you need the higher frequency data, you may choose to obtain data from sensor . community (or other data providers/aggregators), but if 1-hour frequency is enough, then maybe the data in OpenAQ is enough for your needs.

The team behind OpenAQ is here: OpenAQ it’s a small team of four (and in the past, it has been an even smaller team of two), so it does take us some time to get to some issues, but we do our best to respond in a timely fashion, especially to tech support questions in our Slack channel (due to limits I can only add two links in this post, but you can find a join link in our X @OpenAQ). We are also always open to collaborations!

If you want to learn more about OpenAQ, please feel free to peruse the links above, join our Slack, or email us at info [at] openaq [dot] org! I’ll be happy to share more about OpenAQ.

Hope this helps!