Smart City at your service - empowered by emerging technologies Vol. 2 - European strong Data Portal /strong - European Data Portal

Air is essential for our daily survival – it is more important than food or water for us. As urbanisation processes, more and more people and industries are moving into the cities, which has an impact on urban air quality. Forecasts predict that the world population will increase from seven billion to almost ten million by 2050 of which almost seventy percent will live in cities. This clearly shows the increased importance to focus on air quality in urban areas. Actually, the air quality is already low in many areas: ninety-two percent of the world population lives in cities which fail to meet the World Health Organization's air quality guidelines.