State-of-the-Art in the Dissemination of AQ Information to the General Public

Abstract

Air pollution is among the most significant and well studied concepts of environmental pressures. Basic aspects of air pollution and air pollutant identification were already discussed some centuries ago, while contemporary air pollution problems, effects and managing legal incentives have already been adopted by various societies long before contemporary life. Yet, the question of, perception , interpretation and communication of AQ information remains open, and needs to be addressed in an effective way, in order to design better pollution abatement strategies and AQ information services. Moreover, contemporary AQ information dissemination methods and tools can now make use of various telecommunication channels for pull and push service provision. These may include internet for e-mail notification, World Wide Web for detailed pollution related information, SMS for early warning services, WAP and J2ME applications in mobiles and PDAs for enhanced graphical and informative content on the move, street panels (VMS) for covering key parts of the urban web and voice services for personal communication support. In addition, location based services are also emerging in the field of personalised, quality of life services. Moreover, communication per se is not based solely on written or oral language forms, but makes use of graphical, symbolical and in more general terms multimedia language communication schemes, via properly designed multimedia environmental information content. The present paper provides information on the state-of-the art concerning people’s perception and awareness of air quality information, and on AQ (and environmental, in general) information dissemination. The paper also draws conclusions concerning the design and the functions of AQ information services, thus providing valuable information to research institutes, authorities and companies working in the area of environmental information dissemination.