As the last of the fireworks died away in the early hours of 1st January, revised web pages and apps were launched by King’s College London to report to the new national daily air quality index that came in to force at the start of the New Year. Since then, all our web pages and apps have been correctly reporting, using the new index.
Changes to the index were far reaching, with updates to the levels, measurement periods and reported pollutants; notably the inclusion of PM_2.5. Predictive warning "triggers" were also introduced in line with COMEAP recommendations. These triggers will, for the first time, provide warnings of potentially health-damaging air pollution events before they happen, to help susceptible people manage their condition and reduce the severity of their symptoms.
Implementing these changes was particularly challenging because of the Christmas holidays and our wide ranging portfolio of information delivery, including regional network web pages, automatic reporting, and our apps for smart phones and browsers.
In order to continue giving information at an index level of detail, we had to extend our work to define trigger levels for all indexes (1-10), having previously defined them at banding level (moderate, high, very high) for COMEAP.
Further updates to our popular iPhone, Android and Chrome apps will be issued shortly to allow users to fully access the predictive warnings and new health advice.

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Item date 04/01/2012