SunSmart app

The SunSmart Global UV App was developed in collaboration with national and international partners.

Led by Cancer Council Victoria in partnership with the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA), the Bureau of Meteorology and Deakin University’s Applied Artificial Intelligence Institute (A2I2), the SunSmart Global UV app provides reliable at-a-glance real-time and forecast UV levels for locations across Australia and the world.

Internationally, the app was supported by the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

The SunSmart Global UV app was developed to guide users when sun protection is required to reduce the global burden of skin cancer and UV-related eye damage. The app, which provides worldwide UV levels, can be tailored to each person’s specific location, whether they are here in Australia or overseas, and provides daily sun protection times as well as a seven-day weather and UV forecast.

The app has options for alerts at custom times or when sun protection is recommended to take the guesswork out of when to use sun protection and includes a guide on how best to protect yourself during these times.

The SunSmart Global UV app is free for download through the Apple and Google Play App Stores.

To add a location to your SunSmart Global UV app, tap into the Locations section at the bottom panel of the home page of the app. Tap on the blue + Add a location button and type in the name of the location you want to add. Once you type in the name, the search results will be listed. Choose your correct location and it will become visible in your Locations list. Tap back to the home page of the app and you will be able to swipe between your locations at the top of the home page. A maximum of 5 locations are allowed.

To remove a saved location from the SunSmart Global UV app, simply press into the locations section from the homepage. Then press onto the location you’d like to remove, and swipe left. A red section with an icon of a rubbish bin will appear to the right of the location name. Continue to swipe left and the location will be removed.

• UV protection messages
• Live UV data within 100km of Australian capital cities and UV monitoring stations
• Daily UV forecast
• UV future forecast
• Worldwide weather forecasts

• Improved accuracy
• Global UV forecasts
• Improved design
• Tailored notifications per location
• Available in eight languages: English, French, Spanish, Dutch, Chinese, German, Italian and Russian
• Support of WHO and WMO.

The SunSmart Global UV app is available in eight languages including English, French, Spanish, Dutch, Chinese, German, Italian and Russian.

You can use the SunSmart Global UV app anywhere in the world where you have an internet connection. Currently, the app provides hourly UV forecasts for over 2,500 locations across the globe.

The app is designed to provide sun protective behavioural advice and includes five universal icons to provide advice relating to the five forms of sun protection – clothing, hats, sunscreen, shade and sunglasses.

The recommendation outlined in the SunSmart Global UV app to use SPF15+ or higher was made to apply to a global audience, where there are many different UV intensities. In Australia, SunSmart recommends applying SPF30 or higher broad-spectrum, water-resistant sunscreen 20 minutes before heading outdoors, and reapplying every two hours.

The SunSmart app will cease to exist from July 2023. SunSmart recommends downloading the SunSmart Global UV app as soon as possible to begin using the features of the new app.

This data is provided by ARPANSA for a fixed number of sites around Australia. This data feed is updated every 1-2 mins.

The SunSmart Global UV app retrieves worldwide weather forecast data from the Hong Kong Observatory (HKO) every four hours. HKO receives their data from weather departments equivalent to the BOM. Some countries provide a full 7-day forecast, others provide a one-day forecast. Therefore, some countries (e.g., Mexico) may not have a full weather service.

The app uses geo-location data to deliver forecast UV information from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) and weather information from the Hong Kong Observatory. It then uses a unique algorithm guided by the UV Index to provide behavioural guidance as to when sun protection is required and when it is not.

Utilising UV data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, the app follows the recommendations from the Global Solar UV Index#, which measures UV levels on a scale from 0 (Low) to 11+ (Extreme). The Global Solar UV Index (UVI) was developed in an international effort led by WHO in collaboration with WMO, United Nations Environment Programme and the International Commission for Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection.

Sun protection is recommended when UV levels are 3 (Moderate) or higher. ‘Sun protection times’ are those times of day for your specified location when UV index levels are forecast to be 3 or above.

The UV level is affected by several factors including the time of day, time of year, cloud cover, altitude, location and surrounding surfaces. The higher the UV level, the greater the potential for damage to the skin and eye, and the less time it takes for harm to occur.

The new SunSmart Global App uses innovative technology to bring users relevant sun protection time more quickly, with updates on the new app coming every 2 minutes.

Although both apps bring information from the nine live UV stations across Australia, the two apps update that information at different times. This means while they are both accurate, the data in the new app will be updated more regularly than the old app, this means there may be a different live UV levels across the two apps.

The other main factor as to why there may be different information in both of the SunSmart apps is that the UV forecasting is done by different centres. The current SunSmart app is forecasted by the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), while the SunSmart Global UV app uses UV forecasting from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts located in the UK. While both are accurate, they use UV level forecasts for different times, which can result in slightly different sun protection times.

We are proud that this new SunSmart Global UV app is delivering more time sensitive data to users while continuing to offer accurate UV information that Australians need to help increase their sun protection behaviours.

This is due to a 10-minute rounding before midday and rounding up 10 minutes after midday. This is actually a positive thing as the difference either side and actually adds a safety net for sun protection