Towards a climate neutral EU:
efficient allocation of EU funds

Narrative

Airly is a startup founded by a group of students of the AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakow. The idea to create sensors to measure the current state of air quality arose on the occasion of the creators' preparations to participate in the marathon – they wanted to know in which areas of the city it is safest to run, so that the workouts do not turn out to be harmful. Thanks to the funding granted by the National Centre for Research and Development from EU funds, the company was able to implement the project entitled "Development and implementation of effective forecasting and monitoring of air pollution, based on AI techniques using data from an extensive measurement network". The system developed by Airly consists of a network of sensors that measure the concentration of suspended particulate matter, temperature and humidity (in real time), as well as a web platform, mobile application, data panel and forecast. The main idea of the project is to use cheap pollution sensors for air quality analysis, which are spread in the field creating a dense network (ultimately 2-3 sensors / km2 of the area covered by the measurement). According to the developers of the program, the dense arrangement of such measuring devices solves three main problems: -data quality (thanks to the continuous determination of the level of contamination using data from many sensors, which allows to reduce the error of the measured value and allows correction of data in the event of damage to any sensor); -immediate identification of local sources of pollution; -sharing data from places not yet covered by the measurement (e.g. from single-family housing areas, generating low emissions and areas away from precise but expensive measuring stations).

Financial data

The value of the project: PLN 4,522,020.00 (about EUR 1,060,884.46), the contribution of EU funds: PLN 3,399,244.50 (about EUR 797,476.72)

Recommendations

The project developed in the Airly start-up allows not only to monitor the current level of pollution, but also to predict how the situation will look like in a given place in the perspective of the next day. This is possible thanks to data analysis using algorithms and elements of artificial intelligence. As the creators of the system emphasize, the function of checking the air quality forecast is extremely important in particular for the elderly, suffering from respiratory diseases, as well as for people who undertake outdoor activities. With over 4,000 active air quality sensors, Airly provides solutions for smog monitoring to several hundred local governments in Poland. The platform is also being developed outside the country - according to the information on the company's website, Airly solutions are used in 50 countries around the world. The Airly platform has been awarded numerous awards, m.in the Economic Award of the President of the Republic of Poland.

Information sources

Other info

https://airly.org/pl/kontakt/