South Lanarkshire Council highlights the importance of clean air
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A Scottish local authority has created an interactive online Story Map to raise public awareness of air pollution, and encourage citizens to make lifestyle changes to help improve air quality.
South Lanarkshire Council has launched a multi-media campaign to make members of the public more aware of the importance of clean air for healthy lives and wellbeing. Using an interactive Story Map, created with ArcGIS Online, the council is sharing information about air pollutants and drawing attention to the steps people can take to help improve air quality in the areas where they live and work.
Named ‘The air that we breathe’, the Story Map brings together a vast amount of historical, scientific and local information on air pollution and makes it accessible in a highly visual format, all in the same place, for the first time. Members of the public can find out how air quality has changed in the county over the last century, discover what the key pollutants are today, learn about the effects of traffic on air quality and see current hot spots for nitrogen dioxide and particulate pollution. The Story Map features fully interactive maps, so people can see if they live in smoke control areas, find park and ride facilities near their commuting routes and gain ideas for how they can “be part of the solution not the pollution”.
The map was launched to coincide with the UK’s second national Clean Air Day on 21st June 2018 and was viewed nearly 900 times in the six weeks following this event, with more than 40% of hits achieved in the first two weeks. The council is now promoting the Story Map to community groups and schools to help it maintain and increase awareness of this important environmental issue throughout 2018 and beyond.
A page from the South Lanarkshire Story Map, showing how the building of a motorway has reduced air pollution in Rutherglen by diverting traffic from the town centre
“Our ArcGIS Story Map helps us to communicate the importance of air quality and demonstrates that we can all play our part in protecting and improving the quality of the air that we breathe.”