newsletter n°4 -décembre 2010 - citeair ii · 2011-01-13 · program manager, says “trust is an...
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This 4th newsletter marks the 2nd
anniversary of the Citeair II projet.
During the life time of the project, good
practices on emission inventories and
air quality forecasting have been
identified throughout Europe. The first
tests have been carried out on Citeair
II partners’ data, which have been
transferred to other cities who had
volunteered to help develop a generic
statistical tool to forecast air quality.
The parameters for defining a
sustainable mobility indicator have
been set up and a demonstrator has
been developed for Rome and Paris.
The update of the common air quality
index (CAQI) is in progress Tests on a
calculation grid for the integration of
fine particles (PM2.5) have been carried
out using the EU station from the
Airbase database.
What’s next? The third part of the
project has already started...
Further development of the level 2 and
3 air quality forecast and of the
“sustainable” aspect of the mobility
indicator will take place soon.
Also on the menu: the implementation
of the statistical air quality forecast (so
called level 1) on airqualitynow.eu and
of the fine particle grid for the
calculation of the hourly and daily air
quality indices.
More dissemination activities will be
carried out with communication tools
based on the web 2.0 technologies,
new partnerships with the media and
Citeair II final conference to be held in
Rome in June 2011.
With respect to all the work mentioned
above, the purpose of this issue of the
newsletter is to help data providers
identify how they can benefit from the
project, i.e. what they can get and use
from our developments. We appreciate
their trust and their commitment.
Editorial
Newsletter N°4 – December 2010
European Union European Regional Development Fund
Co-financed by the ERDF
Made possible by the INTERREG IVC Programme
An inspiring win-win process is
followed by “AIRNow”, a twin inititive
to Airqualitynow, launched by the US
EPA. This is an interesting track to be
followed, though Citeair II’s scale and
budget are far from being comparable!
Although the sustainability of
Airqualitynow is ensured by Airparif
who hosts and maintains it, AIRNow is
a very good example which should
inspire us.
Karine Léger, Airparif
Lead Partner CITEAIR II
1.
‘In the Paris agglomeration, between 3 and 4 million of people are exposed to levels of pollution above the European regulations due to NO2 and PM10.’
AIRNow
Citeair II learns from the US EPA and its AIRNow system
For about 10 years, the US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) is operating a system called AIRNOW http://www.airnow.gov/, a national framework for acquiring and distributing air quality information.
The system takes account of the distributed and sometimes fragmented responsibilities to measure and forecast air quality in the US. AIRNow is able to collect and gather near real time data and forecasts from very different kind of sources and data providers, always on a voluntary basis. The added value of this initiative is to provide an overall picture of the current and forecasted state of the air quality throughout the country on one
website and to offer services for the community of data providers. This win-win situation ensures that data providers have a vital interest to keep their data delivery up-to-date and thus contribute to an almost complete picture of air quality for the whole US while maintaining their legal responsibility for monitoring, forecasting and local public information. The system was not started by the US EPA but originates from a local initiative: a map of Ozone being shown on TV in 1995 and 1996. Later on President Clinton provided a budget for sharing real time environmental data and the US EPA got involved. That was the beginning of AIRNow as it exists today. In 2001 there were already 25 – 30 states delivering data, which motivated the other States to join the system. Today, AIRNow collects near real time data from 50 States and 400 cities as well as forecasts from the Federal level (Met Service), the States and local air quality agencies when they exist and want to participate. AIRNow is also fed by data from some National Park and Forest services (which monitor Air quality as well, especially particles due to wild fires), and from foreign communities (such as Canada and some Mexican stations). However this system is not made for compliance checking and to be differentiated with the six months official reporting that the States have to provide to the air quality system of EPA. The data providers remain thus responsible for their legal duties which are not taken over by AIRNow, i.e. monitoring, forecasting and public information. John E. White, AIRnow program manager, says “Trust is an important issue in the process”. In turn, the services that AIRNow provide are manifold. Beyond the maps of monitored and forecasted air quality and organising a national conference on air quality, AIRNow puts an emphasis on value added tools for the data providers and for the public.
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The integrated database is built in MS Access and is compatible with open source alternatives. The whole process has been implemented for Rotterdam.
Based on CollectER, a database filled with data for Rotterdam, an empty database ready to be applied by any city will be provided at the end of the project, as well as a guidebook on developing an integrated urban emission inventory. Contact: [email protected]
Forecast of the air quality in your city
2.
It has been increasingly recognised that air pollution and climate change are linked in several ways, and that they could beneficially be addressed by an integrated policy. Policy integration means finding the mix of end of pipe, structural and behavioural measures that meet air pollution and climate change targets at the lowest cost. This is underpinned by a recent study which investigated the benefits of the combination of strategies to reduce the air quality and greenhouse gases versus the benefits of stand-alone strategies. The result was that combined strategies generate an extra 15% reduction in CO2 emissions in Western Europe. (Source: Bollen, J., van der Zwaan, B., Brink, C., Eerens, H. (2009). Local air pollution and global climate change: A combined cost-benefit analysis. Resource and Energy Economics. 31: 161-181.) Inventories of emission, providing for emission by sources and removals by sinks, are one of the vital components of the environmental decision-making process that must be used to improve for example air quality. An integrated emission inventory will enable cities to monitor both air quality and climate action plans. Having one integrated emission inventory will also save time and money and ensure consistency, which is often not the case when relying on two different inventories. In Citeair II guidance for an integrated urban emission inventory based on a review of best practices has been developed. It builds as well on CollectER II, a tool developed by EEA for the managing and reporting of CO2, and air quality emissions at the national level. The CollectER tables are modified and tables are added to cater for specific information requirements for air quality modelling. The idea is that emission information, be it city totals for emission policy or detailed input for Air Quality models is stored only once in an integrated database.
Benefits from an integrated urban
emission inventory
This comprises : - a messaging service on the air quality situation to the national weather channels to inform the public, - a free email- and SMS system that automatically sends air quality information to be used and customised by the corresponding State and local authority - forecast trainings, - notices to subscribers, - tools for data management and analysis.
AIRNow uses an Air Quality Index (AQI) which allows assessing how clean or polluted the air is, and what associated health effects it might cause. The AQI focuses on health effects one may experience within a few hours or days after breathing polluted air. EPA calculates the AQI for five major air pollutants regulated by the Clean Air Act: ground-level ozone, PM, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide. EPA makes the link with local alert procedure in case of pollution episode. Exchanges between the CITEAIR and AIRNow programmes started in 2010 thanks to the participation of John E. White at the CITEAIR mid-term conference held on 1st June 2010 in Ljubljana. Both initiatives agreed to continue the cooperation to identify and exploit synergies and learn from each other. More info: http://www.airnow.gov/
“Trust is an important issue in the
process”, J.E. WHITE, Ljubljana 2010.
To support European cities with forecasting the Air Quality in their area a “3-level approach” is followed. Level 1 is a statistical forecast based on a statistical model that was developed in the project. This model basically uses historic air quality concentrations at individual monitoring stations and the output from a large-scale dispersion model (Prev’air) to calculate the forecast for a city. The result is the forecasted air quality expressed by means of the Citeair Common Air Quality Index (CAQI) for the urban background and for roadside concentrations. A major objective was to elaborate both an efficient and easy to use methodology and to make it as robust and as generic as possible. To implement the methodology and check its robustness and reliability, automated calculation tools and a practical validation procedure have been developed. Extensive validation has been performed on many different cities in Europe: Citeair II partners – Rotterdam, Prague, Seville, Gdansk, Maribor – and other cities which volunteered to provide their data for the test – Brno, Gothenburg, Leicester. We thank them all for their help. The analysis of the results is in progress, but the results obtained so far show a good quality of the forecast. In the meantime, the work on Level 2 and Level 3 forecast methodology is
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More and more cities and services on Airqualitynow
3.
After the first investigation phase, the approach and the methodology for developing the sustainable traffic indicator have been chosen. Consequently, several parameters have the potential to describe the traffic and mobility performance in a city. To test them, traffic data has been collected from Rome and Paris. A platform for displaying the results has been developed and the crucial phase of methodology-testing has been started. The aim of this activity is to calculate the different indicators by means of real-life traffic data, to test their meaningfulness and to compare the traffic situation of the two pilot cities. The first outcomes are currently under detailed investigation with different aims: - to choose among all the defined parameters the best indicator or set of indicators describing the mobility status in a city and - to link them with related impacts of traffic on environment in their city as well as with the most feasible and meaningful time scale. The methodology we are defining opens out to appealing market horizons toward those cities which are interested in applying performance measures such as mobility indicators. Citeair II is open to cooperate with cities that want to benefit from the experience and the tool developed within the project. Contact: [email protected]
More than 90 cities are now providing their air quality data to the webservice www.airqualitynow.eu. Any new city interested in joining is still welcome! This increasing number of data providers allows a better description of the state of air pollution in European cities and a more detailed picture of what is happening at the European scale. Different services are already available for cities and will be further developed. Advertisement and tools to be used by data providers: - On the map of the home page, in addition to the value of the indices, the name of the data provider is added in the little flag of each participating city.
- The cities’ air quality indices are available by RSS feed and can thus be displayed by the data providers on their own website if they wish. A general feed on the Homepage provides the hourly indices for all the cities. A specific RSS feed has been developed for each city, with its own hourly indices. It can be found in the city
continuing. Both take advantage of Level 1 with the aim of providing spatial forecast at a higher resolution. Additional spatial information is provided by auxiliary variables (e.g. emissions, population, etc.) which can be introduced into geostatistical interpolation (level 2) and – when available – into local high resolution chemistry-transport modelling (level 3) like in Marseille or Paris. The next step will be the practical application of the Level 1 forecast methodology on the platform www.airqualitynow.eu for the participating cities. The structure of the website has been updated to accommodate both the representation of the monitored air quality and the forecast for the day after. It is planned to launch the forecast for the first cities in early 2011. Please visit www.airqualitynow.eu and see how this could benefit your city. If you are already providing forecasted concentrations for ozone, particles and nitrogen dioxide and if you wish to provide them on airqualitynow for the day after’s index to be calculated in your city, please let us know! Contact: [email protected]
Follow the mobility performance in
your city The traffic situation and the resulting impacts on the citizens make it mandatory for urban planners and environmental managers to increase their efforts towards a sustainable development. The Traffic & Mobility indicator for urban agglomerations that is under development in Citeair II has the main aims to a) provide a dash-board for a simple assessment of the mobility situation; b) describe the traffic impacts on emission and air quality. It is seen as a toolbox to assist decision makers in managing the traffic in a better way, informing the public and contribute to more environmental friendly behaviour.
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Air quality in European cities: www.airqualitynow.eu
CITEAIR II Project: www.citeair.eu Contact: [email protected]
4.
Other News
Citeair II goes web 2.0. Join us there!
Latest news on air quality initiatives, events and Citeair II are now available on social media networks. Become a ‘fan’ of ‘Citeair’ on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Citeair/116282915074831. Follow Citeair on Twitter: www.twitter.com In addition, actual figures on air quality in European cities are available on the Twitter and Facebook accounts of ‘Airqualitynow’ (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Air-quality-now/132815450076591).
CITEAIR II partners
Save the date - Citeair II Final Conference Rome (24th June 2011)
The final results of CITEAIR II will be presented in Rome in June 2011. More information will be available soon on www.citeair.eu.
details page. An XML file is also available on demand.
- Articles of interest regarding air pollution management and regulation are regularly posted on the facebook and twitter accounts of the project. (see below).
Improvement of the information available on airqualitynow.eu: - For an easier use and understanding in the different countries, the website has been translated in 9 different languages (English, Spanish, French, Dutch…). New translations such as German are on the way. - As additional help to display the information, domain names of the different countries in Europe have been bought to enable the public to reach the corresponding translated page (when existing) by using the extension of their country. - As soon as it is ready, the forecasted air quality indices for the day after will be displayed together with the integration of fine particles (PM2.5) in the indices calculation (daily and hourly indices first). Regarding the forecast, cities can either use the level 1 tool developed by Citeair II based on the hourly data they have already sent, or send the forecasted concentrations they already have (model based or made by a forecaster) and the indices will be automatically calculated on airqualitynow.eu, following exactly the same procedure as the automated sending of hourly data. - In the end, a new tool will be developed in the next months: a mini website. This will allow consulting the Citeair II indices easily on mobile phones (Iphones and androids). Contact: [email protected]
Airqualitynow is currently
available in 9 languages
and soon in even more languages!
Citeair II workshop in Gdańsk 29th October 2010 The main objective of the workshop was to present the latest results of the Citeair II project to Polish stakeholders dealing with air pollution and public information. This event attracted 41 participants from local authorities, research and governmental institutions in Poland. The meeting was hosted and opened by Mrs Dagmara Nagórka –Kmiecik, Deputy Director of Environment Protection Department of the City of Gdańsk and Mr Piotr Stepnowski, president of ARMAAG. The workshop gave great opportunity to exchange views on air quality matters: - Air quality, and action plans and air quality management in Poland were presented as well as the different parts of the Citeair II project. - Different issues were discussed, especially the difficulty to reach the EU limit values and the feasibility to make people change their behaviour. Contact: [email protected]