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12 May 2026

Knowledge Global

Strength in Numbers: How Cities Are Innovating Through Data to Unlock Ambitious Clean Air Action

Cities around the world are taking ambitious steps to clean the air we breathe, with data playing a central role in accelerating action. "Strength in Numbers" highlights how cities across the Breathe Cities initiative are innovating through data, from low-cost sensors and health impact modelling to citizen science and community engagement, to strengthen decision-making and accelerate healthier, more sustainable urban futures.

Download the Initial Findings

Around the globe, cities are taking ambitious steps to clean the air we breathe. Across diverse city contexts, data is central to this effort. Data enables cities to strengthen evidence-based decision making and build sustained public support for ambitious clean air interventions.

While strengthening systems and capabilities to measure, manage, analyse, and communicate air quality data can be complex, cities worldwide are increasingly showing that by taking innovative approaches, they can accelerate action.

Highlights

Cities are showing that innovative approaches to measuring, analysing and communicating air quality data can accelerate ambitious clean air action across different geographies, capacities and starting points.

Data is most powerful when it reflects how pollution affects daily life, helping cities identify who is most exposed, prioritise interventions and build public support for clean air policies.

Community-led monitoring, open-access platforms and citizen science initiatives are helping position air quality data as a shared civic resource that empowers communities and supports locally grounded action.

How cities are innovating through data

Some of the key lessons from the report to better enable cities to use data to accelerate clean air progress include:

Enhance data through innovative monitoring technologies.

New technologies, such as low-cost air quality sensors, are providing effective and affordable ways for cities to collect air quality data and use this to inform policies. Cities can build data collection capabilities over time, progressively strengthening and expanding monitoring networks and complementing them with other sources of data, leveraging external partnerships, satellite or remote sensing data, community-generated data, and lived experience insights to inform effective action.

Invest in systems and people, not monitoring alone.

Data has greater impact when integrated across sectors and institutionalised in government processes. Systems that enable effective data-sharing mechanisms and continuous in-house capacity building ensure information is used consistently and effectively to guide decisions.

Connect data to people’s lives to drive policy.

Air quality data is most powerful when it reflects how pollution affects daily life. Framing evidence around health, cost of living, mobility, and general quality of life strengthens its relevance and impact. Elevating the importance of lived experience data, validating it with residents, and connecting this to technical findings help build understanding and support for clean air action.

Put data in the hands of residents to strengthen action.

Supporting residents to access and interpret local air quality data with tools like open data platforms fosters public trust and enables community oversight of clean air action. Through community-led monitoring initiatives that involve residents as active partners in measuring local air quality, cities can expand monitoring coverage, improve local insight, and empower communities as champions for action. Together, these approaches position air quality data as a shared civic resource that empowers communities and supports locally grounded action.

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