About Hawanama

Hawanama (Urdu for “air report”) is the live air quality platform of the Pakistan Air Quality Initiative (PAQI), a community-driven effort that has measured and published Pakistan’s air pollution since 2016. The map shows hourly fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and the US Air Quality Index (AQI) for 1336 monitoring stations in 621 cities across Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, including 299 monitors in 96 Pakistani cities such as Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad, Peshawar, Faisalabad and Quetta.

Where the data comes from

• PAQI monitoring network: low-cost PM2.5 sensors installed and maintained by PAQI and partners, published through IQAir/AirVisual. The same network is archived on NASA Earthdata (ASDC).
• Government reference monitors: Punjab Environmental Protection Agency and Urban Unit beta-attenuation (BAM) monitors where available.
• Regional monitors in India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka published through IQAir, for cross-border context.

Every hourly value shown is the average of the hour that just ended, labelled in Pakistan Standard Time. Readings are ingested every hour, checked for plausibility, and revised when a provider back-fills a value; every revision is recorded. The methodology and all ingestion code are public in the Hawanama repository.

Open data and API

Hawanama data is free to use under CC BY 4.0; please credit the Pakistan Air Quality Initiative. Downloads and endpoints:

• CSV of recent station readings: https://hawanama-152782825429.asia-south1.run.app/api/v1/exports/station-readings-csv
• CSV of city averages: https://hawanama-152782825429.asia-south1.run.app/api/v1/exports/city-readings-csv
• OpenAQ-style JSON (locations and measurements): https://hawanama-152782825429.asia-south1.run.app/api/v1/openaq/locations
• Live city list used by this site: https://hawanama-152782825429.asia-south1.run.app/api/v1/cities

Related PAQI research and code

• PakEmis: Pakistan greenhouse gas and air pollutant emissions inventory (ten sectors, FY2015-16 to FY2023-24), with code and data on GitHub.
• Satellite-supported daily PM2.5 mapping for Pakistan under sparse monitoring: reproducibility code and model artifacts, archived at doi:10.5281/zenodo.20824536. The “Estimated” mode on the map comes from this work.
• Unveiling Pakistan’s Air Pollution: a national landscape report on health risks, sources and solutions (2025).
• All code: github.com/PakAirQuality. Updates: @pakairquality.

How to cite

Pakistan Air Quality Initiative (2026). Hawanama: real-time air quality data for Pakistan and South Asia. https://hawanama-dashboard.web.app

Credits

Hawanama is designed, built and maintained by Rehan Ahmad (technical lead) for the Pakistan Air Quality Initiative, founded by Abid Omar. The satellite PM2.5 estimation behind the “Estimated” map mode is by Rehan Ahmad, Mahad Naveed and Abid Omar. Monitors are hosted by PAQI’s community of volunteers, schools, businesses and public agencies across Pakistan.

Contact

Questions, data requests or a monitor to host: reach PAQI through pakairquality.com or open an issue on GitHub.