About Us
The people and the story behind the project.
Who are we?
AirData.kz is a non-profit open data project launched by enthusiasts from the international volunteer organization Global Shapers, an initiative of the World Economic Forum. We collect air pollution measurements from every monitoring network we can find across Kazakhstan and Central Asia, clean them up, and share the result with the world — openly and free of charge.
We started because we wanted to understand the air in our own city. We keep going because we believe everyone deserves to know what they are breathing.
The air we breathe
Every winter, Almaty — a city of two million people surrounded by mountains — disappears under a thick layer of smog. On the worst days, PM2.5 levels reach 10 to 20 times above what the World Health Organization considers safe. Schools stay open. People go about their lives. Children play outside.
This is not just an Almaty problem. Cities across Kazakhstan — Astana, Karaganda, Atyrau, Aktobe — face their own air quality challenges, shaped by industry, geography, and climate. But for most of these places, the data is hard to find, hard to access, and hard to trust.
We believe that before you can solve a problem, you need to see it clearly. And to see it clearly, you need data that is honest, complete, and open to everyone.
What we do
We gather air quality readings from government stations, low-cost sensors, and international monitoring networks. We clean and harmonize this data — converting units, checking for errors, flagging suspicious readings — so that it is reliable enough for serious research and simple enough for anyone to understand.
Then we give it away. All of it. In open formats, with full documentation, no strings attached. Researchers use it to study health effects. Journalists use it to tell stories. Developers build tools on top of it. We think that is exactly how it should be.
What we care about
Preserving the record
Air quality data is fleeting — most monitoring systems only keep recent readings, and once the data is gone, it is gone forever. We have been operating since 2019 and archiving measurements continuously, building a historical record of over 10 million data points. Someday, when someone wants to look back and understand what the air was like in Kazakhstan in 2023 or 2025, we want that record to exist.
Openness without conditions
We believe air quality data is a public good. It should not live behind paywalls or require special accounts. Everything we publish is free — free to download, free to use, free to share. No restrictions, no fine print.
Honesty about the data
Sensors break. Readings spike for no reason. Instruments freeze and report the same number for hours. We do not pretend the data is perfect — instead, we flag the problems openly and let people decide what to trust. Every measurement carries a quality mark, and we document exactly how and why we flag things.
Making the invisible visible
Air pollution is easy to ignore when you cannot see the numbers. When the data is visible and accessible — the winter spikes, the neighborhoods most affected, the quiet days when the air is actually clean — it becomes much harder to look away. We hope the data we share helps people understand, and understanding is the first step toward change.
"Liberty is the right not to lie.
Freedom is the right to never have to lie." Albert Camus
We present data in its purest form. We do not editorialize, we do not selectively share, and we do not alter measurements to fit a story. The data speaks for itself — our job is to make sure it can be heard.
These words carry a particular weight for us. AirData.kz was created in an environment where sharing data openly was not entirely safe. That time has passed, thankfully — but we keep this quote as a reminder of why we started, and what we believe data should always be: free, honest, and available to everyone.
Global Shapers Almaty
AirData.kz grew out of the Global Shapers Almaty Hub — part of the Global Shapers Community, a worldwide network of young people working to improve their cities under the World Economic Forum.
The Almaty Hub saw air pollution as one of the most pressing challenges facing the city and started AirData as a small volunteer project to collect and share air quality data. What began in 2019 as a few people with a shared concern has grown into a platform covering 334 stations across all of Kazakhstan, with an official partnership with the national meteorological service.
The project remains entirely volunteer-driven and non-profit. We have no commercial interests and no outside obligations. The data is free because we believe it should be free.
Partnership with KazHydroMet
AirData.kz has an official agreement with RSE "Kazhydromet" — Kazakhstan's national hydrometeorological service — to provide the collected data free of charge to researchers working in the ecological domain. This partnership gives us access to their network of 141+ government reference stations, and allows us to combine official measurements with data from other sources to create the most complete picture of air quality in the country.
Get in touch
If you are interested in air quality in Kazakhstan — whether you are a researcher, a journalist, a developer, or just someone who wants to know — we would love to hear from you.
How to support us
AirData.kz is a volunteer project with no regular income. Your donations help us keep the lights on — cover server costs, maintain the data pipeline, and keep everything free and open. Every contribution counts, and we are grateful for each one.
Donate