<story><title>Google Cloud Public Datasets now hosts EPA and OpenAQ air quality data</title><url>https://cloud.google.com/blog/big-data/2017/06/us-epa-and-openaq-air-quality-data-now-available-in-bigquery</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>panarky</author><text>Important context:&lt;p&gt;1) US federal government has removed vast troves of public data produced by the EPA, OSHA and the Interior Department.&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&amp;#x2F;politics&amp;#x2F;under-trump-inconvenient-data-is-being-sidelined&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;14&amp;#x2F;3ae22c28-3106-11e7-8674-437ddb6e813e_story.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&amp;#x2F;politics&amp;#x2F;under-trump-inconven...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;2) Google has now equipped Street View cars with air pollution sensors.&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;environment.google&amp;#x2F;projects&amp;#x2F;airview&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;environment.google&amp;#x2F;projects&amp;#x2F;airview&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion: If we can no longer rely on getting accurate data from federal agencies, private companies with a public mission will need to gather the data and make it available.</text></comment>
<story><title>Google Cloud Public Datasets now hosts EPA and OpenAQ air quality data</title><url>https://cloud.google.com/blog/big-data/2017/06/us-epa-and-openaq-air-quality-data-now-available-in-bigquery</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>adorable</author><text>Important note: so-called &amp;quot;live&amp;quot; air quality measurements are in reality never &amp;quot;live&amp;quot; due to the nature of the measuring stations (taking measures takes time) and the way data is compiled and shared by the monitoring agencies. As a result typical delays range from 1 to 6 hours, which means you end up using &amp;quot;old&amp;quot; data or signaling a peak when in reality the pollution peak is already over.&lt;p&gt;This is solved by using models that predict air quality levels down to the hour. One option is to use &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;plume.io&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;plume.io&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>