The city of Louisville, Kentucky recently debuted a new service on the IFTTT platform – a web-based service where users can create chains of simple conditional statements, known as applets, that are triggered based on a variety of changes to whatever is being measured – to give residents an easy way to track and monitor air quality.
Air quality data, tracked by Louisville Metro’s Air Pollution Control District, will provide subscribers with information in a multitude of ways through various applets. Options include receiving notifications through mobile devices, or through smart home products such as the LIFX light bulb or Philips Hue light bulb, with the bulbs changing colors based on air quality readings. A green bulb means air quality is good, and a red bulb means stay indoors if you have health issues affected by air quality. Air quality was chosen for the first service because the data is already available. The Ohio Valley air quality in Louisville is of interest to many residents, because high pollen and mold counts can make it difficult for people to breathe if they have certain health issues, such as asthma.
Matt Gotth-Olsen, a digital services designer with the city, said, “We wanted to create a very flexible service because so many people digest information in different ways. Some people like email, some people like text, some like email or a phone call. IFTTT allows a lot of flexibility not only for us, but the citizen.”
“This is all in an effort to bridge what we would like to do for our smart city, which is how do we take smart city technologies and improve services we deliver to citizens and businesses within Louisville metro government,” said Grace Simrall, chief of civic innovation for the city of Louisville.
