Surely at times you’ve wondered if the official Pollutant Standards Index (PSI) readings provided by the National Environmental Agency are truly that realistic. One moment you’d see thick walls of grey smog outside, and the PSI readings on the haze microsite only register low levels. In other times, the figures go into the red, but in reality it looks pretty ok for a stroll.
Now there’s a website application to cut through all the crap and properly see how hazy it is in Singapore — and of course it’s called the No Bullshit PSI Estimate.
That’s not to say that NEA’s figures are wrong though. “NEA’s PSI reading is based on a 3-hour average. While it is a good measure of exposure, it tends to dampen the impact of sharp drops or increase in PSI readings in an hour,” they wrote.
Though we’re not quite sure what formula/algorithm they applied, they seem to have reverse-engineered the hourly PSI estimate which “can be more realistic”. It does check out though — what they’ve posted matches how the haze conditions look outside. Pretty brill we must say.
With a new update, they’ve now revised their calculations to use actual formula specified by NEA to derive hourly PSI from hourly PM2.5 values. Aside from being more accurate now, they’ve also added regional PSI values so you’ll know what’s the situation like in your area.
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