Breathe Easy

The data

The Queensland Government provides access to a number of key data sets used in the development of an app which identifies air and water pollution. These include;

• Air Quality Monitoring – Live Data Feed - Provides real time data from monitoring stations.
• Queensland Environmental monitoring site locations - Provides geo-graphic data for monitoring sites.
• Queensland Land Emissions - Provides data about land emissions from industrial facilities in Queensland.
• Queensland Water Emissions - Provides data about water emissions from industrial facilities in Queensland.
• Queensland Transfer Emissions - Provides data about waste transfers from industrial facilities in Queensland.
• Queensland Air Fugitive Emissions - Provides data about fugitive emissions to air from industrial facilities in Queensland.
• Queensland Air Point Emissions - Provides data about point source emissions to air from industrial facilities in Queensland.

The user

Remark is a Brisbane-based team of hackers, full-stack developers and electrical engineers who created the prototype app Breathe Easy. This ingenious app informs users about air pollution levels in real-time on an interactive map.  Since Remark’s success at GovHack 2016 the team has expanded on the original Breathe Easy idea to create an Internet of Things (IoT) device which monitors environmental data -- this won a People’s Choice Award at the 2016 Brisbane Climathon and the Social Impact Award for Smart Cities at the Hitachi Social Innovation awards.

The benefits

The World Health Organisation (WHO) claims that over 90% of the world’s population live in areas which exceed their stated safe air quality levels. Indeed, WHO estimate 4.6 million people die each year as a result of air pollution. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that environmental monitoring is not available in many parts of the world.

The Breathe Easy app has the potential to benefit the community in a number of important ways:

• By alerting vulnerable people to problems such as poor air quality, the app has the potential to save lives, while also improving peoples’ quality of life.
• The devices could be used to improve STEM engagement by teaching kids about the environment, as well as how to code IoT devices.
• The data transmitted by the IoT devices can be used to control other IoT connected devices, such as air purifying systems.

Watch the video submission

Other environmental  data

Discover other live feed / near real time data to download  from the portal.