Impact of 7 years of Open Air Quality Community Data in Pakistan

Since 2016, as a citizen scientist, Abid has worked on air quality data and advocacy in Pakistan through the Pakistan Air Quality Initiative (PAQI), significantly raising awareness and contributing to the government’s policy framework for air pollution. PAQI’s use of open data from low-cost sensors in this effort has garnered media attention and recognition. Inspired in part by the OpenAQ Ambassador program, Abid has also established an Air Quality Research Center in Pakistan.

In this project, Abid undertook the first comprehensive survey of seven years of community-generated, low-cost sensor data from Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, and Peshawar, comparing it with available reference-standard and government data. This analysis, utilizing tools like Jupyter Notebook and the OpenAir R package, focused on anomaly removal and identifying pollution patterns, revealing that Lahore experiences significantly worse air quality. The findings underscore the necessity for broader monitoring networks in Pakistan extending beyond major cities to smaller towns, as preliminary data suggests similarly high pollution levels nationwide.