QMIC and SCH sign partnership agreement for piloting Hawa'ak

The partnership signing ceremony was held at the QSTP campus and was attended by senior representatives from both parties and invited guests from many national entities.

Dr. Adnan Abu-Dayya, Executive Director of QMIC, said, "We are excited to work with a key national entity like SCH to deploy our leading Hawa'ak solution and applications and demonstrate the value of localized and realtime air quality monitoring. This partnership will help us increase the awareness for the importance of air quality monitoring. We look forward to working together with SCH and other national entities to promote a healthier quality of air for the residents of Qatar."

Dr. Sheikh Mohammed Bin Hamad Al-Thani, Director of Public Health, said, "We are very happy to collaborate with QMIC on trying out the Hawa'ak intelligent Air Quality Monitoring system that will allow us to monitor air quality around the country. SCH is very keen in monitoring air quality in real time and to create a rich bank of air quality info. This will allow us to assess the impact of air quality on human heath and will help us prevent pollution-caused diseases from happening. SCH encourages growing the local talent and building local technical capacity in this important area, thus; we are eager to work with QMIC and use a locally-built solution, customized for Qatar, to proactively monitor air quality to allows us to take preventive actions as needed."

"The initiative of Food Safety and Environmental Health sector to tryout Hawa'ak comes within the framework of a comprehensive programme to monitor air quality, which began in the Department of Environmental Health of the sector and includes monitoring and evaluating air in residential areas in and outside Doha city. In addition to a special unit to measure air pollutants at traffic congested areas as Dafna's towers area," Dr. Mohammed added.

During the event, QMIC and SCH announced the beginning of their collaboration on using Hawa'ak. The pilot includes the deployment of multiple innovative air quality monitoring stations capable of detecting various pollutants such as CO, SO2, NO, NO2, H2S, and dust particles (PM).

Hawa'ak is a rich and flexible platform fully & locally developed by QMIC that utilizes a new generation of mobile air quality monitoring stations at lower cost and provides ubiquitous coverage to support realtime and historic monitoring of air quality and other environmental conditions.

The data collected by the Hawa'ak monitoring stations is transmitted wirelessly via GPRS and processed by QMIC's Intelligent Sensing and M2M Services Platform (Labeeb). Labeeb transforms the raw air quality data to useful air quality information in realtime and store the data for further analysis and research.

Hawa'ak then delivers the personalized and relevant air quality information to users through innovative applications via multiple delivery channels including mobile applications, web portals, SMS, and voice interaction.

"The Hawa'ak system and applications represent a key element of the "Smart Living Services Initiative" that QMIC launched last year. QMIC will use Hawa'ak to create an integrated and rich air quality monitoring system suitable for deployment in Qatar and the region," Dr. Adnan added.