Entry for emissions / ar

This is a discussion about the submission for emissions / ar.
La información disponible pareciera sólo corresponder a Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires y Bahía Blanca.

The information available seems to be just for Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires and Bahía Blanca.

Thanks @laura.araki,

Our reviewer @ricalanis and I discussed how we deal in cases where air quality data is not available in a central repository for different locations in a territory. We decided that we also accept a sample of data if this sample can capture a larger population in a country. This has several reasons:

  • Air quality data might be collected locally. National environmental protection agencies may show national figures, but may not provide disaggregated air quality data per measurement station.

  • There seems to be an emphasis to measure air quality in urban regions (see for example a recent report on urban air quality by the WMO). I’m not sure how air pollution measurement grids are distributed in different countries. But I know that on a global level urban air pollution gains significant attention. This is sensible, given the dense populations and exposure to pollutants in urban regions.

For these reasons I discussed with our reviewer that we could accept a sample of at least three major cities as a valid submission (as in last GODI). Buenos Aires represents a significant portion of Argentina’s population, so it is debatable whether this review applies (general coverage in different cities vs. size of population represented)

Do you know of any other URLs for air quality in Argentina? @ricalanis, thoughts?

Best
Danny

Hi, I agree with the criteria that air quality can’t be measured at the country level.

In the city index we have data for other cities:
http://ar-cities.survey.okfn.org/dataset/enviroment

Hello, I understand both comments, thanks @dannylammerhirt and @martinsz.

Not sure if you have also checked this website, I’ve just found it: Contaminación del aire de América Latina: Mapa de la calidad del aire en tiempo real.

Regards, Laura

Hi @laura.araki,

The Air Quality Index is a incredibly useful source for air quality. It allows governments to publish their air quality data on their website. Yet the website is not an official government source but aggregates government data. It would be very interesting to get in touch with them and see if Environmental Protection Agencies actually perceive them as an interesting option to host their data.

Best
Danny

Good pointer @martinsz. I think more regional/local indeces might be better suited to measure this data category.

As far as I can see, your results do (at least) not contradict our results. Am I right that you primarily assessed water quality (in Bahia Blanca and Cordoba)?

Yes, there are at least two cities that monitor and publish open data on air quality: Buenos Aires and Bahía Blanca.
And on water quality we have Buenos Aires and Bahía Blanca, but also there are some national level indicators.

As a side note: We have joined water and air quality datasets for the Argentina city index, because of the scarcity of data we want to recognize cities that have any data on environment.

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