Source register
AirAgora data sources, attribution, licenses, and modifications
AirAgora combines OpenWeather’s modeled air-pollution forecast with licensed place metadata and public-health references. It distinguishes the provider’s official 1–5 scale from AirAgora’s concentration-band severity, caching, scoring, and presentation.
Source → method → decision
OpenWeather is the production runtime provider
Production requests use HTTPS on api.openweathermap.org with a server-only OPENWEATHER_API_KEY. The Air Pollution API returns current conditions, four days of hourly forecasts, pollutant concentrations, and OpenWeather’s official air-pollution scale from 1 to 5.
Production never switches to fixtures, scraping, another provider, or an unexpected host. If the key is absent or the host is invalid, AirAgora fails closed and reports the bounded configuration error.
The provider scale and AirAgora severity have different roles
AirAgora preserves OpenWeather’s official 1–5 value and category for display. That provider scale is not labeled U.S. AQI, European AQI, or a local regulatory AQI.
For window ranking and main-pollutant selection, AirAgora derives continuous internal severity from OpenWeather’s documented concentration bands for PM2.5, PM10, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, sulphur dioxide, and carbon monoxide. The internal score is never presented as a synthetic AQI.
GeoNames defines the city directory
AirAgora’s directory uses the GeoNames cities15000 export under CC BY 4.0. It includes valid populated places with coordinates, country, IANA timezone, and population above zero, orders them by population with GeoNames ID as the tie-breaker, and selects exactly 2,500.
City pages retain name, ASCII name, GeoNames administrative-area label, country, continent, coordinates, population, elevation or DEM, timezone, feature code, modification date, and GeoNames ID. AirAgora adds ranks, broad factual ranges, nearby distances, localized country names, and page routes. It does not infer pollution causes from those fields.
EEA and EPA remain educational public-health references
The European Environment Agency is the public reference for European AQI naming and presentation. U.S. EPA AirNow is the reference for U.S. AQI categories and activity guides. Those regulatory systems remain useful educational context.
AirAgora does not relabel OpenWeather’s 1–5 provider scale as either regulatory AQI and does not claim a local national index. Regulatory pages compare named systems without changing the runtime provider scale.
WHO guidance sets a cautious communication boundary
The WHO 2021 guidelines summarize evidence that supports careful treatment of air pollution at lower concentrations than older recommendations recognized. AirAgora uses that context to avoid saying that a category is safe for everyone.
WHO material is not used to create diagnoses, personal treatment, or city-specific burden claims. The product remains an informational planning tool and directs urgent decisions to official authorities.
What AirAgora modifies
AirAgora validates inputs, caches and coalesces provider requests, derives continuous component severity, scores complete windows, applies tie and meaningful-change rules, selects a main pollutant from compatible concentration bands, and translates the result. Those operations are product interpretations under rule airagora-1.1.0.
The interface labels source, OpenWeather scale, modeled status, update time, stale state, completeness, and rule version. Provider errors do not become fabricated values.
- Runtime air fields: OpenWeather with visible attribution.
- Provider display scale: official OpenWeather 1–5.
- Internal ranking: documented pollutant concentration bands.
- Place metadata: GeoNames CC BY 4.0.
- Public-health context: EEA, EPA AirNow, and WHO.
Direct answers
Frequently asked questions
Which provider does AirAgora use in production?
OpenWeather Free on the official HTTPS API host with a server-only key. Missing OPENWEATHER_API_KEY returns unavailable without a fallback.
Are AirAgora values station observations?
No. AirAgora labels the OpenWeather air-pollution forecast as modeled and states that local conditions can differ.
Where do the 2,500 cities come from?
They are the deterministic top valid populated-place records from GeoNames cities15000 after documented validation and population ordering.
What license covers city metadata?
GeoNames data is available under CC BY 4.0. AirAgora credits GeoNames and documents its selection and added fields.
Does AirAgora call the OpenWeather scale U.S. or European AQI?
No. It preserves the official OpenWeather 1–5 label and keeps regulatory AQIs on educational pages.
What parts are AirAgora’s own interpretation?
Continuous component severity, window scoring, tie rules, meaningful-change logic, main-pollutant selection, caching, translation, and presentation are AirAgora transformations.
Evidence register
Sources and further reading
The links below identify the primary references used on this page. Selection, summary, and presentation are AirAgora modifications.
- 1.OpenWeather Air Quality API documentation
- 2.OpenWeather terms and attribution
- 3.OpenWeather Air Pollution API documentation
- 4.GeoNames export documentation
- 5.European Environment Agency — European AQI
- 6.U.S. EPA AirNow AQI basics
- 7.U.S. EPA AirNow activity guides
- 8.WHO global air quality guidelines (2021)
Keep exploring
AirAgora provides informational planning guidance, not medical advice. Local conditions can differ from modeled forecasts; follow official guidance during severe events.