IBM Corp announced on Monday in the United States that it had signed a contract with the Beijing municipal government to determine the basic elements of emissions to help predict air quality in the Chinese capital.

The US embassy in Beijing and China's government have been publicly reporting real-time pollution levels to local residents. The government initiates emergency measures when fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) concentrations rise too high, including regulating factory production and limiting the number of vehicles on the road. IBM said it hopes to create a tailor-made system for the region.

"By applying supercomputing processing power, scientists from IBM and the Beijing government aim to create visual maps showing the sources and dispersions of pollutants across Beijing 72 hours in advance with street-scale resolution. This capability does not exist today," Steve Tomasco, IBM Research's director of communications, wrote in an e-mail to China Daily on Monday.