“As many of us live in cities, ensuring a sustainable urban environment is vital. Cities are the engines of Europe’s economy and are increasingly recognised as key players in Europe’s transition towards a low-carbon economy.” (https://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/sustainability-transitions/urban-environment). Urban sustainability can be achieved among others by addressing successfully poor air quality, reduction of GHG emissions through mitigation measures, social inclusion and participation in implementation of EU policies. UESG mission is to (i) monitor anthropogenic activity through the development and enrichment of a multilayer gridded database; (ii) forecast and assess air quality and effectiveness of mitigation measures; (iii) perform integrated studies and applications concerning the climate change interplay with our data; (iv) exploit existing knowledge to promote behavioural change via IoT tools and applications. In this effort we strive to attract EU, national and private funding as well as recruit young and experienced researchers to ensure our future success.
b. Research Focus
UESG has developed its research goals, interests and methodologies considering the importance of open data collection, by focusing on the following topics: (i) Emissions: Development and continuous update of the bottom-up/top-down, high resolution, open and flexible emissions inventory for Greece and Attica (FEI-GREGAA) on a GIS platform used as input to modelling and for in-depth analyses; (ii) Photochemical Modelling: Application of the WRF/CAMx modelling system over the urban area of Athens and Greece to study the air pollution dispersion characteristics, the impact of emissions sources and policy strategies on the improvement of air quality and the short term forecast of pollutant concentrations; (iii) Urban Air Pollution Monitoring: Deployment of a small network of IoT low cost PM2.5 sensors to provide data for comparison of our modelling results and the improvement of FEI-GREGAA; (iv) Climate Change/Air Pollution Mitigation: Assessment of emissions reduction measures per sector such as sustainable mobility and energy consumption profiles acknowledging that classical pollutants and GHG share common sources; (iv) Awareness Raising and Promotion of Good Practices: transfer of the knowledge and information accumulated to the public via targeted training material and free applications.
c. Main Scientific Directions
- Development of scenarios on different types of energy consumed and technology of appliances (e.g., heating appliances, vehicles engine).
- Investigation of the full causal chain from the consumption profiles to emissions sources to the speciation of precursors and secondary pollutants and their complex relations.
- Short-term forecast of air quality over local, greater urban and regional scales on a daily basis with the aid of air quality indexes and study of physicochemical processes for the evaluation of parameters and sources that determine air quality.
- Experimental study of the quality of the environment indoors and outdoors in urban areas and connection with daily activities and exposure patterns.
- Educational activities for the promotion of behavioral change, accelerating the transition towards a low carbon society.
- Urban climate and well-being via (i) Sustainable mobility studies (e.g., promotion of cycling) ii) monitoring and numerical studies on urban noise (iii) urban planning (e.g., green city).