A new web-based AI tool, designed to help create air quality assessments, is receiving rave reviews from initial users. Over 20 air quality consultancies are currently beta testing the Airly AI tool, which has been developed to accelerate air quality assessments for planning and development proposals. After two weeks of evaluation, the tool has been used extensively over 100 times, and Airly Product Lead Marta Steiner says: “The feedback has been very positive, 80% of all testing users reported very significant time saving, with data collection taking seconds – instead of hours or days! and 70% of the Airly AI users said that the product exceeded their expectations.”
Developers and planning authorities utilise air quality assessments to model the air quality impacts of proposed developments, and with around 30,000 people dying prematurely from air pollution in the UK every year, these reports perform a critical role in sustainable development.
The Airly AI tool automates the gathering of information that would previously have been painstakingly obtained from multiple online sources of local geographic, environmental and transport data. For example, the Annual Status Reports, which include monitoring data, from 99% of Councils have been digitised by Airly AI, and 92% are now automatically available in the tool.
Certain features of the new tool have been found to be particularly beneficial. For example, the majority of users indicated that editable tables with diffusion tube and monitoring site data bring the greatest value to their work, and most commented that the quality of AI generated content is equal to their own. Similarly, the automatic drawing of road links on the GIS map has been extremely popular; typically reducing the time taken for this task by around 70%.
The beta testing will end shortly, but Marta says: “This evaluation period has provided a great opportunity for air quality professionals to understand how Airly AI can help them. The users are using the Airly AI tool extensively in their everyday work, which clearly demonstrates the willingness of air quality companies to adopt new technologies and embrace new opportunities for their businesses.
“Feedback from these early users is being used to further enhance the tool’s capability because we are determined that it should be developed to meet their precise needs,” she adds. “The next milestone on the Airly AI road map is to enable air quality consultants to automate other types of air quality assessments.”
Anyone with an interest in air quality assessments can book a demonstration at https://airly.org/en/airlyai/. Alternatively, the program will be on show at the IAQM’s Dispersion Modelling User Group (DMUG) conference on 25th April 2024 in London.
