Safe Outdoors Calgary
A personalized 'is it safe to go outside right now' verdict for Calgary families — combining heat index, AQI from wildfire smoke, UV, and storm risk into one parent-friendly answer.
Calgary parents of kids with asthma or allergies and caregivers of elderly relatives
- Single green/yellow/red verdict tailored to your household's health profiles (asthma, heart, age)
- Hour-by-hour breakdown of when the next clean-air window opens for a park visit
- Push alerts when PM2.5 crosses the threshold you've set for your kid or parent
- 'Saturday planner' that picks the best morning and evening windows for outdoor plans
Calgary is in a wildfire-smoke summer with 100+ B.C. fires, plus extreme heat and severe-storm risk hitting on the same day — parents can't piece together AQ, heat, and storm data fast enough to make a call.
Calgary had 512 smoke hours in 2023 and 200 in 2024 with widespread news coverage of historic heat+smoke combos, but multiple existing apps (IQAir AirVisual, Canairy, PollenTracker, WeatherCAN) already serve this exact need, so unmet demand is modest.Calgary air quality advisory smoke heat - Calgary CityNews ↗People - Smoke Hours - The City of Calgary Climate Dashboard ↗
The market is essentially saturated: PollenTracker literally offers 'a clear YES/NO decision on whether it's safe to go outside today' for Calgary, Canairy watches air for places you care about (home, kid's school), IQAir AirVisual targets families with allergies/asthma, WildFire-Ready covers Calgary wildfire/smoke, and WeatherCAN plus The Weather Network provide free official data.Calgary Pollen Count & Allergy Forecast Today | PollenTracker ↗Canairy: Air Quality Alerts - App Store ↗IQAir AirVisual | Air Quality - App Store ↗Calgary Wildfire Map & Tracker | WildFire-Ready ↗
Willingness to pay is weak: Environment Canada provides free AQHI/UV/heat data via WeatherCAN, The Weather Network is free ad-supported, and direct competitors like Canairy and PollenTracker appear freemium. Parents can piece this together from free sources, making a paid single-city niche app hard to monetize.WeatherCAN app - Alberta.ca Air Quality Health Index Resources ↗Canairy: Air Quality Alerts - App Store ↗
Wildfire smoke exposure in Calgary remains highly variable and elevated vs historical norms (200+ smoke hours in 2024), and climate change makes recurring heat-smoke-storm compound events structurally worse — a multi-year tailwind for any outdoor-safety product in this region.People - Smoke Hours - The City of Calgary Climate Dashboard ↗What to do during wildfire smoke - The City of Calgary ↗
Trivial to build: all needed inputs (AQHI from Environment Canada, UV index, humidex/heat, storm warnings) are public free APIs, no novel ML or hardware required, MVP could be a thin wrapper plus localized parent-friendly copy.Air Quality Health Index - Canada.ca ↗Air Quality Model Forecast Maps - Environment Canada ↗