COPPAQ, a project to address air pollution and extreme heat in peri-urban areas of sub-Saharan African cities: challenges and access to the project results

In Africa, air pollution and extreme heat hazards are complex and influenced by interconnected socioeconomic, political, and environmental factors. These challenges remain poorly understood especially in the peri-urban landscapes of Africa where poor air quality has been exacerbated by rapid and unplanned urbanization in addition to global climate change. The unplanned and rapid expansion in peri-urban landscapes hinders the implementation of coherent or effective measures against air pollution and extreme heat. The combination of degraded air quality and  weather-related hazards can increase the burden on already struggling households in peri-urban communities.

The COPPAQ consortium brings together partners from South Africa (coordination of the project), France, Kenya, Ivory Coast and the USA aiming to propose a transdisciplinary approach to address growing challenges associated with air pollution and extreme heat in peri-urban areas of sub-Saharan African cities. With the goal to strengthen the understanding of hazards, exposure and vulnerability and to guide effective policies for extreme heat resilience and clean air, the project will:

• combine state-of-the-art remote sensing with high resolution air quality modeling to measure and map geographic and temporal patterns of air pollution and extreme heat
• identify underlying processes that may cause existing patterns of air pollution and extreme heat using diverse datasets, including remotely-sensed land use/land cover characteristics and emissions inventories
• create comprehensive and nuanced knowledge on exposure, sensitivity and capacity to respond to risk by combining GIS analyses with communities' perspectives
• jointly-design solutions for air pollution and extreme heat challenges by bringing together community members, policy-makers, and researchers.

Several datasets will be produced in collaboration with the Copernicus European program, more particularly with the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), which will support access to and further development of satellite observations and emissions data. Most of the datasets generated by the project will be made available to the actors and users of the project through the ECCAD platform. ECCAD (Emissions of atmospheric Compounds and Compilation of Ancillary Data: eccad.sedoo.fr) will provide a user-friendly access and training to the project results, especially for datasets on emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases, as well as for satellite-based observations.