Winning project from the 3rd Open Call funded by the AI4Copernicus Project

Company: Lobelia Earth
Country: Spain | Domain: Health

An interview with the winners – Aytor Naranjo, representing the Lobelia Air project

Q: What was your motivation for creating this proposal?

A: To pilot our solution in two new cities with relevant problems related to air quality. On one hand, the city of Sofia who is suffering from high PM pollution during winter from heating by burning wood, coal and garbage as well as high levels of NO2 that are not always detected. Then, Rotterdam is an excellent showcase as well, considering it is one of the largest ports in Europe. Therefore, an interesting showcase for large coastal cities with port infrastructure. 

Q: Which is the most critical impact (societal or other) that your project could make (if you could name one)?

A: Monitoring air quality to reduce public health risks is the most critical impact we would like to tackle with this project.

Q: Considering the recent funding received through the AI4Copernicus Open Calls, do you have any plans for further development of your idea?

A: Our idea is to replicate our solution to new cities in 2023 to support decarbonisation plans at local level.

A few words about the project: Lobelia Air is an operational service developed to monitor and forecast air pollution at the hyper-local level. This proposal focuses on improving the current monitoring and forecasting results of the Lobelia Air system through machine learning-based integration of heterogeneous data sources including official monitoring stations, low/mid-cost sensors and atmospheric models.