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WEBAIR-2 will follow-up on E!3266 WEBAIR for urban and industrial air quality management, by extending the application scope and IT technologies employed to:

  1. Particulates (PM10/2.5) emission modelling and public health, with emphasis on the political controversial concepts of local traffic reductions by various regulatory and economic instruments;
  2. CO2/GHG emissions, energy efficiency and the co-benefits between Kyoto targets (and the emerging follow-up commitments from Copenhagen) and "classical" air pollution, as regulated, for example, in 2008/50/EC, based on a distributed, bottom-up approach to emission control using the directly measurable air pollutants as a direct validation instrument, and
  3. Use of 3G mobile phone technology for personalized health related information, warnings and exposure reports e.g., for Asthma patients.

A key objective of the proposal is to add elements of sustainable development and explicit environmental criteria to the overall objectives of the Lisbon Strategy.
Actions and means involved:

  • Determine local versus long range imports by combining monitoring data analysis supported by long-range transport modelling and remote sensing for large-scale synoptic observations;
  • For national sources, determine the “natural” component, and non-combustion based contributions as well as industrial and traffic generated
  • Identify a range of control measures based on this source apportionment;
  • Forecasting including population exposure and estimated health effects, data assimilation and model validation tools and public information e.g., information and alert thresholds;
  • Develop dissemination and communication strategies for the public and stakeholders.

Expected results (outputs and quantified achievements):

  • Detailed source apportionment for air pollutants, emphasis on particulates (PM10/2.5) for Cyprus, detailed long-range imports, man-made and natural contributions according to 2008/50/EC, §20;
  • An air quality management plan based on the above source apportionment, summarized by the quantitative modelling tools, and designed with the help of a non-linear, dynamic, multi-criteria optimization approach; a major component of the air quality plan will be guidelines for the individual cities, communities and community councils and emission control strategies, including land use planning and land cover management;
  • Public and stakeholder information and involvement: this will provide continuous data with complete high-resolution spatial coverage on air quality.