The Air Quality Health Index (AQHI) was developed by Health Canada and Environment Canada (EC), in collaboration with the provinces and key health and environment stakeholders, to provide information to Canadian on how air quality can impact their health on a daily basis. Four years ago, the AQHI was piloted in Toronto and has since been expanded to more than 50 communities across Canada. Initially, verification methods were conducted manually. This manual collection procedure has become very burdensome as the program has expanded nationally. We have developed an automated forecast verification protocol that helps EC confirm that it is achieving the ISO standards that have been set within EC for AQHI.

In this talk we will provide an overview of the automated data collection system, the AQHI verification database, and the web-based verification tools that have been created to help forecasters and developers evaluate the AQHI forecasts. The system automatically collects and combines daily observations, human forecasts, as well as model data from different sources and formats for each of the forecast sites. The data is then stored into the AQHI Verification Database. Web-based applications have been created to i) query data for a user-specified time period and location, ii) retrieve information based on a user-specified forecast issue, and iii) create verification statistics based on ISO 9001:2000 requirements for EC (e.g., percentage within one correct score and critical success index) for the user-specified time period and forecast community.

The automated AQHI forecast verification tool has been extensively tested using case studies for Ontario AQHI locations. Currently, feedback is being collected from the forecaster community on its usefulness. The hope is that the verification tool will be operationalized and made available to AQHI forecast communities outside of Ontario.