Knowing the issues the company was facing with data collection, Andrew and his team began looking for alternatives. After doing an extensive literature review, they discovered AirSage in peer reviewed literature published by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and were excited to see what AirSage could offer. Initially, Andrew asked for a sample dataset from AirSage, as he wanted to ensure the data was reliable. After review, he saw that AirSage data tracked well with his onsite data. In fact, it was an 85% correlation over 4.5 years and hundreds of miles, which was a level of accuracy that was unheard of in the space. This result proved to Montrose that AirSage data was trustworthy, and they could rely on it moving forward.
When asked why AirSage stood out from the other location data providers, Andrew explained, "Besides the accuracy of their data, it was the helpfulness (AirSage) provided upfront.
Now that Montrose is using AirSage data, the spatial and temporal difficulties of data collection are gone. They can retrieve data for thousands of miles of a site, and for each day in a multi-year time period. And, it only takes a matter of weeks. Because of the time and cost savings, they are able to enter new market segments that they could not have accessed before. Andrew explains, “It went from ‘what are we going to do to get data?' to 'what can we do with all the data we have?' We went from not having anything to having everything possible at once.”
