Project Description

The research will address urban air quality focusing on contribution of road traffic recognized as one of the main sources of urban air pollution. The final goal of this work is to implement the air quality modelling system in forecast mode that requires new developments and improvements of the currently available system. In order to improve the characterization of the urban aerosol, modelling techniques will be combined with aerosol measurements. The following key objectives are defined: (1) To improve current traffic-related emission modelling (currently focused on hot exhaust emissions) in order to incorporate cold-start and non-exhaust emissions. Therefore, developments in terms of the algorithms of transportation and emission models will be made; (2) To explore currently available regional scale services based on Earth observations and Atmospheric modelling and to evaluate their applicability to urban scale air pollution forecast. Moreover, a new approach will be developed to incorporate the background concentrations from the regional scale service in air quality dispersion models; (3) To improve characterization of urban aerosol number and size distribution. Several aerosol measurements will be applied among the urban area to gather data and validate the integrated modelling approach.

Research Team

• Noela de Pina
• Oxana Tchepel

Financial Support

• FCT

Stage of Progress

• Started in 2018