SMOG ALERT - LOW VISIBILITY IN NEW DELHI
New Delhi, the capital city of India is extremely polluted. Due to high air pollution rate - the visibility decreases along with poor air quality. The weather is cold, winters have arrived so it becomes really smoggy every morning as well as in the late evening.Throagh the "open weather API", I am recieveing information specifically for New Delhi's weather data.
DESIGN PROCESS
To achieve my goal for the project with a weather API, I signed up and rigistered to the "open weather" website and recieved an API key which got activated within 2 days. I used the URL and API key to use the JSON file of the current weather of Delhi. The weather here is the current weather in New Delhi, I picked this city because I live here and the air quality is very poor. The visibility generally is too poor, which leads to many effects on physical health or social environment with accidents due to low visibility or health issues where people get Asthma problems or other breathing problems including damage in the lungs. It is much needed to address social problems to save environment, and earth from global warming. The current weather also changes the images at the backround along with the alert texts when the visibility or the temperature changes. It tells you when there's mist, fog, or haze. In pandemic, during the lockdown, the weather conditions in Delhi improved because the people didn't drive their vehicles for almost two to three months unless an emergency. This reduced the pollution in Delhi,India which also improved the visibility and air quality of the environment. But again, after everything slightly got back to normal and people began to go for work, puplic transport facilities opened, the pollution increased and till now it is very poor. To declare if the weather is foggy or misty or hasy, I looked up at the range on wikipedia, and defined the text using the if conditions with the weather.
REFLECTION
Through this assignment, I learnt how to connect my code to the API with an API key, and receive information to run my code. The weather data of New Delhi, is poor in terms of air quality, visibility and himidity in comparison to other cities in the world. The project emphasises people in Delhi to follow the rule of "Red Light on, Engine Off". Since the population of Delhi is approximately 'thirty million, two hundred ninety-one thousand'. Due to which 1.35 billion people owns cars, imagining the pollution created by these car on roads is getting worse day by day. Indian goverment recently started a propaganda at traffic lights where the workers stand with the hoardings and banners that asks you to turn off the engine while standing at the red light. They also knock on your window to request you to turn the engines off at times when people don't listen to them. This is a good thing to do and I feel that propagating this agenda would reduce atleat some amount of air pollution, which would probably a very minute change. Many people nowadays use mobile applications and widgets to check weather updates, I thought it would be nice to share social issues and support them by promoting right things. This would alarm the application about the weather and the damage we're causing to the environment everyday. Out of the 7 principles of Feminism - "Consider Context and Embrace Pluralism" are being implied here. Delivering an awareness through weather prediction resource about air pollution, weather description and alerts on how to reduce air pollution fulfills the "Consider context" and propagating this context through digital media is Embracing plularism, the constitution of each person who follows it could, shares it could change some percentage of Delhi pollution. Mentioning do's and don't to regulate pollution could help each of us breathe in the very fresh air. Vehicle pollution attributes to 45% of the air pollution which means that people driving on the roads are very much responsible for creating pollution. It is very hard to achieve pollution free or clean environment nowadays, due to the busy lifestyle one has - in metro cities. But eventually, reducing and following these prompts could definitely make a better environment with clear visibility and cause less accidents to occur due to the smog in the cold weather in Delhi or just any other city. I live in Delhi and I have realised myself, that looking out of the window to another building is just next to impossible due to the low visibility.