Skip to main content

Plume Labs and Bird capture air quality data

Plume Labs has partnered with Bird to obtain air pollution data in hard-to-reach areas in the French capital Paris.
By Ben Spencer April 6, 2020 Read time: 1 min
Not the Paris that the tourists usually see (© Jdanne | Dreamstime.com)

Plume says 25 Bird employees have been wearing its air pollution sensor Flow when travelling around the city to redistribute electric scooters over a two-week period. This process provides data on how air quality changes on different streets, the company adds. 

According to Plume, the 'Bird Watchers' covered nearly 1,500 miles and gathered 300,000 data points for the pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter.

Plume is now adding this data to its street by street maps of air quality for major cities, which use machine learning models to forecast how pollution will change on every street segment of a city. 

“This kind of information gathering is a big deal in Paris because, while we have an amazing street-by-street map that gets updated once every hour, Flow data gets updated every 60 seconds on top of next-level precision,” the company writes. 

The company claims this approach could also help cities and towns do not have the budget to maintain an air quality monitoring network.

Related Content

  • October 12, 2012
    Inrix expands traffic data programme collaboration
    Nearly a year after the I-95 Corridor Coalition, the University of Maryland (UMD) and Inrix announced a three-year expansion of the Vehicle Probe Project (VPP), the coalition and its partners are expanding their collaboration once again. Through a Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Awards Grant, the coalition will use Inrix traffic information to expand coverage to over 40,000 miles of roads across fourteen states.
  • December 1, 2020
    Personal sensor moves smart cities forward
    Open-seneca is a portable air quality monitor designed to pinpoint emission hotspots and drive behavioural change - and Swedish capital Stockholm is trying it out, writes Adam Hill
  • December 20, 2021
    The scourge of poor air quality and rising pollution levels and how they can be tackled
    Arguably, air pollution is one of the greatest challenges facing our world today. It impacts people, economies and the environment. It is clear that policymakers must act swiftly to improve air quality. ITS has a huge role to play in providing solutions. Here, Swarco, as a solution provider, shares inside tips on how to use modern ITS to save lives, economies and the environment.
  • September 13, 2016
    Volvo and KPMG find buses are key to urban air quality
    Buses can play a key role in the battle to improve air quality in towns and cities as David Crawford discovers. A city with a population of half a million would gain about US$12.3 million in annualised societal savings if all its buses ran on electricity instead of diesel. This is the conclusion of a wide-ranging analysis carried out by Swedish bus manufacturer Volvo Group and global business consultants KPMG.