The Cangzhou Clean Air Project Blueprint: How cities can use hyperlocal air pollution monitoring data to locate hotspots accurately and improve enforcement efficiency

Organizing air quality monitoring and initiating enforcement activities with the city and local level environmental authorities play a key role in improving China’s air quality. However, existing air quality monitoring networks and enforcement systems are still far from being effective and efficient.

The Cangzhou pilot project, organized by Environmental Defense Fund China, Cangzhou City government, HD Environmental Consortium, and SUSTC Engineering Technology Innovation Centre (Beijing), aims to demonstrate how monitoring technologies can deliver hyperlocal data to advise environmental officers to locate air pollution hotspots accurately and improve enforcement efficiency, explore a data-driven solution to improve air quality. The Cangzhou Clean Air Project Blueprint provides lessons learned from the two-year pilot, illuminating how mobile monitoring can be combined with existing monitoring networks to identify hotspots.