Policy makers and South Africans in general will from today be able to access centralised air quality information following the launch of the South African Air Quality Information System by the Department of Environmental Affairs at the South African Weather Service.
Mr Peter Lukey, Chief Director of Air Quality and Climate Change at the Department of Environmental Affairs spoke about the many benefits for the public in general in her keynote address at the launch. Amongst others, she indicated that all reporting stations verify their data and feed it directly into the SAAQIS.
The system will always contain the latest updated data of a location and can give the status of air quality or pollution according to the chosen day and time when checked on the website. The SAAQIS is a web based interactive air quality information system which seeks to provide the state of air quality information to citizens and it is a research portal for strengthening policy development related to air quality issues.
This system has been developed and tested for a period of three years to ensure its consistency and that all South Africans should be able to access the latest information with the click of a button when they log onto http://www.saaqis.org.za.
In the past, policy making in this area has been based largely on ad hoc air quality information often with no historical data to understand air quality trends and impacts. However, with the existence of an air quality information system such as the SAAQIS, policy making will for the first time be driven by air quality information which will make it possible for air pollution trends to be determined for each area being monitored. This is in line with the Air Quality Act (AQA of 2004) which adopted the air quality governance cycle that emphasises air quality information as a start and end point of air quality management in South Africa.
This has a profound advantage in that as a country we can begin to assess whether air quality is improving and also identify areas where potential air pollution problems exist. As such, all provinces and local municipalities that have air quality monitoring stations are encouraged to report its air quality data to the SAAQIS to ensure national data coverage and continuous explorations of avenues to improve the air quality in order to prevent health risks.
To date, 42 air quality monitoring stations are reporting to the SAAQIS. Most of these stations belong to networks such as the Mpumalanga province, Ethekwini Metro municipality, City of Johannesburg Metropolitan municipality, Tshwane Metropolitan municipality and the national Department of Environmental Affairs. Plans are already in place to reach out to other networks with the intention of expanding the number of stations reporting to the SAAQIS. Consultations in this regard are ongoing.
The implementation of SAAQIS is a continuous initiative which will be realised through a phased approach. The first phase which is the development of the air quality monitoring data reporting system has been completed. The second phase commences in the 2010/11 financial year and will focus on the emissions inventories from sources such as industries, vehicles, residential dwellings as well as other energy sources. The third and last phase will focus on air pollution modelling which will enable real-time forecasting of air pollution similar to weather forecasting.
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Issued by: Department of Environmental Affairs
23 March 2010
