Overview of RI-URBANS project - an update

In the urban areas, regional and local air quality monitoring networks (AQMN) provide the concentrations of regulated air quality parameters. However, there is a rising concern of aerosol particle number concentrations, lung deposited surface area and black carbon (BC) as novel health indicators that connect closely to the well-being of the citizens. The capacities of the AQMNs need to be improved to be able to respond to the need of novel air quality data.

Aerosols, Clouds and TRace gases Research InfraStructure (ACTRIS) provides harmonized high-quality data on the variability of aerosols, aerosol precursors and their complex interactions through remote-sensing and in-situ measurement techniques. More specifically, ACTRIS has observations on surface aerosol levels, including nanoparticle-size distribution, PM size distributions, nanoparticles, online (aerosol mass spectrometers, MS and aerosol chemical speciation monitors ACSM) and offline (filter-based chemistry) chemical composition, BC, Volatile Organic Compounds as precursors of PM, nanoparticles and O3, radiative properties of aerosols, and 4D (3- dimensions and online in time) atmospheric measurements. 

There is a need to connect the ACTRIS expertise and that of the air quality monitoring networks. This provides the starting point of Research Infrastructures Services Reinforcing Air Quality Monitoring Capacities in European Urban & Industrial AreaS (RI-URBANS), a European Commission funded project in the Horizon 2020 Call H2020-LC-GD-2020 (Building a low-carbon, climate resilient future: Research and innovation in support of the European Green Deal).

The challenge of RI-URBANS is therefore to develop innovative urban AQ service tools, in clear complementarity with the AQMNs, and provide innovative tools to better quantify the impact of atmospheric species most deleterious to human health. Under the complex and changing AQ situation of urban pollution as described above, obtaining monitoring data on PM composition, source contributions to PM, nanoparticles, 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 nanoparticles, and other pollutants such as exhaust and non-exhaust vehicles PM emissions, and BC) and regional ones (for SOA and Secondary Inorganic Aerosols (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 RIs and science teams can be used to supplement current AQMNs of regulated pollutants.

On one hand, the overarching objective of RI-URBANS is to demonstrate how Service Tools (STs from atmospheric Research Infrastructures (RIs) can be adapted and enhanced in a RIs-AQ Monitoring Networks (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. On the other hand, ACTRIS has then the opportunity provide harmonized pan-European observation capacity of urban air quality and therefore to contribute to the well-being of the population.

In this work we will summarize the key developments of the RI-URBANS project acquired during the first year of the project.