Over the past few months I have been part of an extremely exciting project, I am pleased that I am finally able to share it with you.
Eye On Earth is a new application that provides air and water quality to more than 500 million people across Europe, using both measurement stations and modelling data, along with social observations from people around not only Europe, but the whole world.
This is one of the first applications to be built and run on Windows Azure and SQL Azure allowing near real-time data to be presented at air stations and in a Europe wide air quality model.
Environmental issues, Bleeding Edge Solution
Eye On Earth uses a number of bleeding edge technologies including Windows Azure, SQL Azure and Silverlight to bring a rich user experience that can be scaled on demand whilst still processing all the near real-time data.
One of the first things that you notice when you visit Eye on Earth is how great it looks- it really shows off what you can do with Silverlight and the latest Bing Maps Silverlight Control.
Windows Azure is at the core of Eye On Earth and is not only used to host the front end, but also on the back end sits on it too - with a number of worker roles that are used to process compute intense tasks, without effecting the performance of the front end.
Eye on Earth is heavily focused on data, all of which is stored and queried using SQL Azure, along with this the application has large volumes of data being entered at near real-time from the European Environmental Agency.
But I Don't Have Silverlight …
Eye On Earth will still love you. While it was primarily designed to be run as a Silverlight application, but with not everyone being able to use this technology, a parallel site has also been created using ASP.NET (along with some blood, sweat and tears). The ASP.NET version not only allows you to run the application anywhere - it gives you the vast majority of the features you would see in the Silverlight version.
Along with ASP.NET the team utilized jQuery and the recently released Microsoft AJAX Content Delivery Network (CDN) to give all the rich user interactions without the power of Silverlight. When being re-directed to this version of the site you can hardly tell the difference between what you would have experienced in Silverlight and what you see in ASP.NET
Quick Tip – turn off Silverlight and check it out.
Lighting up Europe
Eye on Earth has a number of “light maps” that are overlaid on a Bing Map controls to show a visual representation of both the air and water stations as well as user feedback.
Different coloured dots are used to visualise where the measurement stations are and allows users to zoom in and view more fine grained data.
User feedback, for both air and water quality can be turned on and off at the top of the map control and will show a colour coded display of where users have rated the air or water in a given location. These user ratings are coloured differently to the official readings, so that the user will be able view the social rating of given areas.
As more users rate the air and water quality around the world the light map will automatically re-generate and show an updated view of the social ratings.
Each of the light map tiles in the application have been generated using using a number complex algorithms, and processed on Azure worker roles before being stored in blobs for retrieval when a user views the site. This makes it much easier to create the tiles in parallel over multiple nodes, ensuring that the process is both fast and efficient.
Modelling Air Quality
You can also see air quality models put together by the European Environmental Agency on an hourly basis. With this model, users can be given a overview of the quality of the air around Europe from either a heat map, or placing push pins.
As this data arrives it is directly input into SQL Azure and processed, and passing the a number of compute tasks to Azure worker roles so that the images are generated correctly and displayed in the fastest possible manner.
Station to Station
As you zoom into the map within the Eye on Earth application measurement station appear as icons. Round icons represent water stations and the square icons with a wind-sock represent the air stations.
You can mouse over or click on individual measurement stations, to view more in depth data about the given station. On the left hand side the station will show the official EEA rating and a break down of the measurements that give the station this rating. On the right social user ratings are displayed, giving an idea of how the general public rate the air or water quality at the given location.
As you can see in the image this station has a good user rating, but a rating of very good from the EEA.
As more users rate the station or the air in surrounding areas, the word cloud on the left will update giving an idea of keywords that users have selected when rating the quality at this location.
Eye on Earth also displays historical water data on the water stations, allowing the user to see what the station has measured the water to be like over the past couple of years. Along with a yearly update seasonal updates will be displayed, showing how the current water season has been for the location.
We Live in a Social Environment
It’s not just the EEA that get to put data on the site – as a user, you can rate the quality of air and water in your region too.
Rating a location is simple, all you need to do is identify how good the air or water quality is at this location and then select one or more rating keywords that best describe the area.
Sharing the data at a given location can be via a number of social networks, including Facebook, Twitter and Live Spaces.
I Can See my House from Up Here
Viewing the air data within Europe is not restricted only to the measurement stations within the application. Using the air model we allow users to place pushpins anywhere on the map, and if this is within the data areas for the model it will return what the quality of air is at that location.
The user will then be able to rate or share the information at this pushpin location as if they had viewed the data from a measurement station.
If the pushpin is placed outside of the air model for Europe no air data will be retrieved, however you will still be able to rate the air at the location, using the rate button. This allows something that doesn't exit anywhere else - a worldwide air quality indication generated by users.
Data On the Go, via SMS
Users wont always be in the comfort of their own home or workplace and therefore not always have access to a computer – and so it was a logical step to build a mobile solution into the application for the user to get data on the move.
Eye On Earth has a SMS service that allows users to text in their location, and retrieve an automated response showing what the quality is like at the given location.
Je Ne Comprends Pas
It’s always easy to forget that English isn’t everyone’s first language – and over the next couple of weeks we’ll be adding 24 additional languages to the Eye On Earth site, enabling more and more individuals to benefit from the site via Silverlight, ASP.NET and SMS.
Eye on Earth will automatically detect your locale as it loads, and switch not only to the correct language but also giving you localized map controls.
And Finally…
Eye on Earth is a stunning, elegant and full featured application that allows businesses, governments and individuals from around Europe to view and rate the air and water quality where they are, using the latest technologies such as Azure and Silverlight. All of this data contributes to the biggest, most up-to-date Europe wide map of air and water quality publicly available on the Internet.
Go to www.eyeonearth.eu and try the site yourself.
