At the University of Oregon, this app was written by the Location Innovation Lab to help our administration efficiently manage the environmental health and safety regulations for employee exposure to wildfire smoke. These regulations are stipulated by the state occupational safety and health department.

App admins input Air Quality Index (AQI) threshold triggers and the cellphone numbers of users in need of timely notification and select the authoritative AQI monitoring stations in the region the user wants to monitor. Canary then acts as a sentinel, continuously monitoring the stations.

Admins can also activate Quiet Times to silence notifications and queue them up for delivery. For example, between midnight and 5AM, the notifications will quietly queue up. Texts are sent in the morning when users are starting their day and ready to consider the implications of overnight changes to AQI.