Digital discovery: IQ Air Platform

This October’s Digital Discovery Session introduced the IQ Air platform - a near real time global platform for monitoring air pollution.  The session underscored the benefit of adopting digital tools for automated environmental monitoring, shared successful business models as well as discussed the power of public-private partnerships.

The platform, a part of the GEMS Air programme, is also now part of the digital ecosystem of UNEP’s World Environment Situation Room.  Data from the platform is also being streamed into live public dashboards – a technique highlighted in a previous Digital Discovery session by environmental engineer Katie Patrick. The session included perspectives from partners such as Telcom provider (Safaricom), data management partner, SailBriCooper , technology provider IQAir and beneficiaries such as the Nairobi County Government.

The session was hosted by Sean Khan, UNEP’s manager of the IQ Air partnership. It also featured Yann Boquillod from IQ Air, Varun Yadav, Vice President of Operations at Saibri Copper Inc, and Lawrence Mwangi, Deputy Director of Environment at Nairobi City County, and Michael Koech from Safaricom.