RI-URBANS

Cities and industrial areas are air pollution hotspots. Assessing the sources and health effects of air pollution is a first step towards reducing it. The EU-funded RI-URBANS project will demonstrate how advanced service tools from atmospheric research infrastructures (RI) ACTRIS, ICOS and IAGOS can be adapted to tackle air quality challenges and societal needs in urban and industrial areas.

It will provide enhanced air quality observations for advanced air quality policy assessment by developing synergies between Air Quality Monitoring Networks (AQMNs) and RIs in the atmospheric domain. This will increase the capacity of AQMNs to evaluate, predict and support urban air pollution restriction policies. Combining science and technology, RI-URBANS will implement five pilot service tools in nine European cities.

LThe European project RI-URBANS was submitted in response to a call for tenders on research infrastructures capable of tackling the challenges set by the European Green Deal. The project received €8 million in funding for a four-year period as part of Horizon 2020, the European Union Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (H2020), under grant agreement number 101036245.

The participation of the Centre for Education, Research and Innovation in Energy Environment (CERI EE) in this project is linked to its significant involvement in the ACTRIS (Aerosol, Clouds, and Trace gases Research Infrastructure) RI as a unit of the European Topical Centre for Reactive Trace Gases In Situ Measurements (CiGas). ACTRIS is a distributed RI bringing together laboratories of excellence and observation and exploratory platforms to support research on climate and air quality. It helps improve understanding of past, present and future changes in atmospheric composition and the physico-chemical processes that contribute to regional climate.

The CERI EE researchers involved in this project will conduct an inventory by identifying observation data on reactive trace gases potentially available to major European cities with the aim of assessing the quality and relevance of the information collected, using it to work on the strategy for identifying pollutant emission sources in several European cities.
As part of this work, the researchers contributed to the note on recommendations from ACTRIS and RI URBANS for the revision of the European Air Quality Directive.

Find out more:

More information on the project website:
https://riurbans.eu/

List of partners with the coordinator: joint coordination by CSIC (Spain) and University of Helsinki (Finland):
https://riurbans.eu/partners/

 Link to the I’MTech article and interview:
https://imtech.imt.fr/2021/11/29/des-outils-daide-a-la-decision-pour-ameliorer-la-qualite-de-lair/

Link to the note on recommendations from ACTRIS and RI URBANS for the revision of the European Air Quality Directive:
https://riurbans.eu/ri-urbans-and-actris-send-recommendations-for-the-revision-of-the-european-directive-on-air-quality/