Alibaba Cloud has launched the "Pollution Map" APP to venture into the governance of smog

The environmental monitoring APP "Pollution Map" of Alibaba Cloud Computing Platform has quietly been launched. The emission data of nearly 3,685 enterprises that discharge waste gas can be queried in real time. Once there is a record of exceeding the standard, it will be immediately exposed to the public and subject to social supervision, effectively curbing the sources such as polluting enterprises.

Alibaba Cloud's "Pollution Map" is released by the non-profit organization IPE(Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs), and Alibaba Cloud provides it with cloud computing resources for free. Unlike the simple air quality monitoring function of other environmental monitoring software, "Pollution Map" leverages the real-time big data processing capabilities of Alibaba Cloud Computing Platform. It can query the air index and pollutant concentration of 190 cities at any time. Meanwhile, it also summarizes for the first time the real-time emission data of waste pollution sources in multiple provinces and cities. The map will clearly mark the names of enterprises that exceed the emission standards for waste gas. It is marked with the control indicators and detection values of the harmful gases emitted by the enterprise and compared with the standards. Whether the emissions exceed the standards is clear at a glance. The public can share it at any time on social platforms such as Weibo and Laiwang, allowing the enterprise to accept public supervision.

Just a few days after the app was launched, a large number of netizens posted on Weibo about the nearby pollution sources that exceeded the standards. Who ranked them and where were they ranked? Polluting enterprises are nowhere to be found, and netizens have spontaneously called on enterprises with high emission concentrations to make public explanations on this matter. The official Weibo accounts of the Shandong Provincial Department of Environmental Protection and other supervisory units stated that they would transfer the enterprises reported by the public for excessive pollutant discharge to relevant departments for handling. They also stated that information disclosure reflects a concept, supporting public environmental protection and supervision and evaluation from all sectors of society. They hope that environmental protection departments at all levels will urge enterprises to earnestly rectify the situation and respond positively. In addition, the APP also adopts the concept of green procurement guiding green production, and has released the green supply chain management rankings of over 80 well-known brands, allowing the public to promote emission reduction through voting.

While exposing highly polluting enterprises, it also enables the public to learn more about green brands, achieving a two-way promoting effect. Environmentalists believe that this is a way to draw more people's attention to environmental protection issues. Public supervision of emission data will help local governments restrain pollution emitters. How does the "Pollution Map" achieve real-time supervision of pollution sources? The real-time monitoring data of 190 cities and 3,000 enterprises is updated every hour, which requires extremely high computing and processing capabilities for the data. The historical data generated thereby is even more massive. In the past, when using traditional IDC services, due to issues such as the server scale being unable to handle a large number of concurrent accesses in a short period of time, it was difficult to collect and store massive amounts of data.

Since 2011, Alibaba has worked with over 20 non-governmental environmental protection organizations to rectify nearly 100 enterprises that illegally discharge pollutants, and has participated in the protection of the Yangtze River water source area together with the Nature Conservancy and others.