RI-URBANS project

RI-URBANS project

Research Infrastructure Services for Strengthening Air Quality (AQ) Monitoring Capacities in European Urban and Industrial AreaS

Supported by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 – Research and Innovation Framework Programme, H2020-GD-2020, Grant Agreement number: 101036245

RI-URBANS (riurbans.eu) offers innovative urban air quality (AQ) service tools (STs), in clear complementarity with the AQ monitoring networks (AQMNs), and provide innovative tools for an advanced AQ assessment and to better quantify the impact of atmospheric chemical species most deleterious to human health. Under the current complex urban AQ situation (policies prompted in a marked decrease of pollution and continuing abating pollution requires of more complex strategies), obtaining monitoring data on particulate matter (PM) composition, source contributions to ambient PM, nanoparticles (equivalent here to ultrafine particles, UFP), and gaseous precursors, as well as spatially resolved exposure maps of urban pollutants, will contribute to enhanced AQ policy assessment and evaluation of health effects in Europe. For such assessment both urban scale modelling (for UFP, and other pollutants such as exhaust and non-exhaust vehicles PM emissions, and black carbon, BC) and regional ones (for secondary organic and inorganic aerosols, SOA and SIA, and for the background levels of all the other pollutants) are also needed. RI-URBANS is based on the premise that advanced monitoring and modelling tools developed by Research Infrastructures (RIs) and science teams can be used to supplement current AQMNs of regulated pollutants.

The overarching objective of RI-URBANS is to demonstrate how STs from atmospheric RIs can be adapted and enhanced in a RIs-AQMNs interoperable and sustainable way to better address the challenges and societal needs related to AQ in European cities (and industrial, harbour, airport and traffic hotspots) as areas with especially significant levels of air pollution and associated health effects. Very importantly RI-URBANS coincided in time with the elaboration and implementation of the new AQ Directive (EU) 2024/2881 (NAQD), and the project contributed to both of them on issues related with Article 10 and Annex VII, dealing with supersites and new air pollutants.

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