And the winner of today's Craptastic Speechifying Award: London deputy mayor Nicky Gavron, who yesterday announced, "There’s more than love in the air this spring! Air pollution causesaround one thousand premature deaths each year, and we must doeverything we can to cut emissions."
The context of Gavron's cringeworthy address was, however, pretty cool: airTEXT, an SMS-based service that sends Londoners daily text messages telling them when pollution is high and what sort of respiratory problems it could cause. The service can be used by anyone, but is aimed at asthmatics and otherpeople who are especially sensitive to air quality. Most early userssay that it's helped them avoid pollutants and manage their symptoms.
AirTEXT works by combining satellite weather data with traffic information, generating forecasts for each London borough. It's not hard to imagine the system becoming even more flexible and site-specific -- generating, for example, real-time and site-specific warnings that are sent to people as they enter particularly smoggy spots.
What would such a service be called, I wonder? Geo(synchronous)tagging? Smogtagging? Maybe Nicky Gavron's speechwriter has some ideas....
London asthma sufferers get space-based help [press release]
