Implementing Air Quality Alerts in Your App

In an era of growing environmental awareness, providing real-time air quality information is not just a luxury but a necessity. People want to know the quality of the air they are breathing, and they want to be alerted when pollution levels reach hazardous levels. This is where implementing air quality alerts in your app becomes crucial. In this technical blog, we will explore how to integrate air quality alerts into your application using webhook alerts, ensuring that users are well-informed about their environment.

Introduction

Air quality alerts are essential in today's world where air pollution poses significant health risks. By integrating these alerts into your app, you can empower users to make informed decisions about their outdoor activities and protect their health. To achieve this, we will implement a solution that leverages real-time air quality data from reliable sources and sends webhook alerts to users when air quality deteriorates.

Prerequisites
Before we dive into the implementation, let's make sure you have the following prerequisites in place:

Development Environment: Ensure you have a development environment set up for your app. This could be a web application, mobile app, or any other platform where you want to deliver air quality alerts.

API Access: Identify a reliable source for air quality data that offers an API. Some popular choices include OpenWeatherMap, AirVisual, and AQICN. Sign up for an API key from your chosen provider.

Webhooks: Familiarize yourself with webhooks and have a server capable of receiving HTTP requests from your app. You can use a cloud-based server or set up a dedicated server.

Implementing Air Quality Alerts
Now, let's proceed with the implementation of air quality alerts in your app.

Step 1: Obtain Air Quality Data

The first step is to fetch air quality data from your chosen API source. Here's a sample code snippet in Python using the requests library to retrieve air quality data from Ambee:

import requests

api_key = 'YOUR_API_KEY'
city = 'YOUR_CITY'

url =  https://api.ambeedata.com/latest/by-city?city=Bengaluru}'

response = requests.get(url)
data = response.json()

# Extract relevant air quality information
aqi = data['list'][0]['main']['aqi']
main_pollutant = data['list'][0]['components']

print(f'Air Quality Index (AQI): {aqi}')
print(f'Main Pollutants: {main_pollutant}')

Replace 'YOUR_API_KEY' and 'YOUR_CITY' with your actual API key and the city for which you want to fetch air quality data. This code fetches the AQI and main pollutants for the specified city.

Step 2: Define Alert Thresholds
To trigger air quality alerts, you need to define thresholds for different air quality levels. These thresholds will depend on the air quality index (AQI) values provided by your API source. For example:

Good (0-50)
Moderate (51-100)
Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups (101-150)
Unhealthy (151-200)
Very Unhealthy (201-300)
Hazardous (301+)

You can create a dictionary that maps AQI ranges to alert messages. Here's an example:

alert_messages = {
    (0, 50): "Air quality is good. Enjoy outdoor activities!",
    (51, 100): "Air quality is moderate. It's safe to go outside.",
    (101, 150): "Air quality is unhealthy for sensitive groups. Limit outdoor activities.",
    (151, 200): "Air quality is unhealthy. Consider staying indoors.",
    (201, 300): "Air quality is very unhealthy. Avoid outdoor activities.",
    (301, float('inf')): "Air quality is hazardous. Stay indoors and use air purifiers if available."
}

Step 3: Implement Alert Logic
Now, it's time to implement the logic that will determine when to send air quality alerts. This logic should compare the current AQI with the predefined threshold ranges and trigger alerts accordingly. Here's a simplified example in Python:

def send_air_quality_alert(aqi):
    for (lower, upper), message in alert_messages.items():
        if lower <= aqi <= upper:
            send_webhook_alert(message)
            break

def send_webhook_alert(message):
    # Implement your webhook logic here
    # Send an HTTP POST request to your webhook server with the alert message
    pass

In this code, the send_air_quality_alert function takes the current AQI as input and iterates through the predefined AQI ranges. If the current AQI falls within a range, it triggers a webhook alert using the send_webhook_alert function.

Step 4: Set Up Webhook Server
To send webhook alerts, you need a server capable of receiving HTTP requests. You can set up a simple Flask server for this purpose. Here's a minimal Flask server that listens for incoming webhook alerts:

from flask import Flask, request

app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route('/webhook', methods=['POST'])
def receive_webhook_alert():
    data = request.get_json()
    # Extract and process the alert message from the request data
    alert_message = data.get('message')
    
    # Implement your alert handling logic here
    # You can send the alert message to users through your app

    return 'Alert received and processed'

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run(host='0.0.0.0', port=8080)

This Flask server listens on port 8080 for incoming POST requests to the /webhook endpoint. When an alert is received, it extracts the message and processes it according to your app's requirements.

Step 5: Integrate Alerts into Your App
Finally, integrate the air quality alerts into your app's user interface. Depending on your platform (web, mobile, etc.), you can display the current air quality information and alerts to users in a user-friendly manner. Ensure that users have the option to enable or disable these alerts.

Conclusion

In this technical blog, we've explored how to implement air quality alerts in your app using webhook alerts. By following the steps outlined above, you can provide users with real-time environmental alerts that help them make informed decisions about their outdoor activities and health. Remember to choose a reliable air quality data source, set up alert thresholds, and implement the alert logic to ensure the effectiveness of your air quality alert system.

Implementing air quality alerts in your app is not only a valuable feature but also a responsible step towards promoting environmental awareness and ensuring the well-being of your users in today's world of increasing pollution concerns.