Page 13 - Case study: Air quality management in Southern California, USA

basis for functioning of most terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. The air pollutants penetrate
vegetation through their leaves and cause complex and varied adverse effects on different
ecosystems (e.g. eutrophication of ecosystems, mineral deficiencies, reduction of biodiversity).
The only negative environmental impact is related to providing energy to the air quality stations
‑which there were already installed‑ and to the servers where the platform is hosted. These
impacts are considered acceptable.

3. Conclusions

As demonstrated above, operating the Envirosuite platform at the regional scale has many hurdles
to overcome. Noticeably, there More processing capabilities are needed when working with huge
amount of data.

Understanding the high degree of interdependence that bordering cities have between each other
is quite important. High‑accuracy data sources and validated scientific models combined with the
proper software processing capability can help fighting complex problems such as regional air
quality.

The willingness to cooperate among public authorities, and the adaptability of the cloud platform in
order to process huge amount of data coming from different data sources existing on a large area is
important.

Looking forward, the project is looking to the following points in order to continue to improve and
adapt to the dynamic environments that it is in:

• understanding the feedback from the public authorities,

• assessing the policies implemented,

• being able to compare the initial situation about air quality against the current air situation, and

• measuring the impacts on population health improvement will be challenging and also highly
beneficial.

The platform has been designed to be configured very easily and replicable in other cities and
regions. The Envirosuite platform is a scalable solution that flexible in its implementation. It is
usually implemented on a local scale, covering facilities such as a port or a refinery, or a small
city. The platform has also been adapted at the regional scale such as the case of the Californian
authorities in this case study. In the case of needing a denser network, or the project managers
decide to increase the extension of the project, more air quality and weather stations can be flexibly
added to the platform without any problem. Therefore, the project can be scaled up to more Air
Quality Management Districts if necessary.

Air quality management in Southern California| California, USA 7