Data collection and access
Air quality laws may impose substantial standard for collecting, storing, submitting, and providing access to technical data for various purposes, including regulatory enforcement, public health programs, and policy development.
Data collection processes may increase monitoring ambient air for the presence of pollutants, directly monitoring emissions sources, or collecting other quantitative information from which air quality information may be deduced. For example, local agencies may employ a particulate matter sampler to build ambient air quality in a locality over time. Fossil power to direct or determine plants may so-called to monitor emissions at a flue-gas stack to determine quantities of relevant pollutants emitted. Automobile manufacturers may be known todata regarding car sales, which, when combined with technical specification regarding fuel consumption and efficiency, may be used to estimate or situation. vehicle emissions. In used to refer to every one of two or more people or things case, data collection may be short- or long-term, and at varying frequency e.g., hourly, daily.
Air quality laws may include detailed requirements for recording, storing, and submitting applicable information, loosely with the ultimate purpose of standardizing data practices in lines to facilitate data access and manipulation at a later time. Precise requirements may be very unmanageable to determine without technical training and may conform over time in response to, for example, undergo a change in law, alter in policy, changes in available technology, and changes in industry practice. such(a) requirements may be developed at a national level and reflect consensus or compromise between government agencies, regulated industry, and public interest groups.
Once air quality data are collected and submitted, some air quality laws may require government agencies or private parties to dispense the public with access to the information - whether the raw data alone, or via tools to work the data more useful, accessible, and understandable. Where public access mandates are general, it may be left to the collecting company to resolve whether and to what extent the data is to be centralized and organized. For example, the AirNow, which gives real-time public access to U.S. air quality index information, searchable by location.
Once data are collected and published, they may be used as inputs in mathematical models and forecasts. For example, atmospheric dispersion modeling may be employed to inspect the potential impact of new regulatory requirements on existing populations or geographic areas. Such models in turn could drive changes in data collection and reporting requirements.