Case Studies: EarthSense accelerate the transition to clean air

Billions of people around the world are still breathing unhealthy air, and it’s the responsibility of local authorities to take charge of how cities live and breathe. As high emitters come from a wide range of sources, from transport to community living, to construction, it’s pivotal that air quality services have flexibility to provide insights for various applications. EarthSense’s comprehensive service ensures all angles can be covered – here’s a few examples.

Trialing School Streets

London is known for being one of the most polluted cities in the UK, affecting the health and wellbeing of younger generations. Taking steps towards a safer and greener city, Westminster City Council used twenty of EarthSense’s low cost, indicative Zephyr^® monitors to trial School Streets across a 12-month period, so it could determine whether the schemes should be rolled out permanently to minimise the levels of toxic pollution reaching the air that children breathe.

Following the trial period, Westminster City Council could access historic NO₂ and PM_2.5 Zephyr^® measurements through the MyAir^® web app, which was compared with baseline and traffic data to assess the relationship between traffic count, pedestrian movements, and air quality. These insights provided quantitative evidence about changes in air quality that could be attributed to School Streets and found an impressive 20% reduction in the number of children travelling to school by car.

Reducing congestion and vehicle emissions

With deadlines for Net Zero slowly inching closer, Liverpool City Region Combined Authority have set its own targets for zero emissions by 2040. To meet this goal, Zephyr^® monitors have been installed on to traffic lights across major routes in Liverpool and real-time measurements have been integrated with Yunex Traffic’s urban traffic controls via API, providing live data for vehicle emissions across the city.

Using intelligent transport systems with integrated air quality data, traffic can be dynamically managed to reduce congestion as it occurs across the city. Liverpool City Region Combined Authority are using combined solutions to identify live hotspots and reroute traffic, consequently minimising congestion and the associated health and environmental implications of exposure to unsafe air quality. Intelligent traffic management is allowing for a complete understanding of traffic movement at important traffic corridors, and the insights needed to hit Net Zero targets.

Monitoring air quality, noise and vibration at residential development sites 

Monitoring the impact of environmental noise, air quality and vibration across densely populated urban locations is becoming of heightened importance. To better protect surrounding residents from ongoing construction at a shopping centre in London, EarthSense’s partner, KP Acoustics Group were tasked with carrying out noise, vibration, and dust monitoring (PM₁₀ and NO₂) at a mixed brownfield and greenfield development site in the area.

To meet this goal, KP Acoustics Group split the site into two key monitoring sections, using high-tech noise and vibration monitoring equipment and EarthSense’s Zephyr^® monitors to determine disruption. All devices used solar panels to power the monitoring equipment to overcome the issue of limited power on the site.  To ensure construction work adhered to noise limits and air quality levels set by conversations from the local council, monitoring was set up from September 2021. Since, ongoing monitoring at the development site has successfully worked to minimise the associated health and environmental implications of exposure to unsafe air quality and noise pollution for surrounding residents.

Clean air is a right for everyone, everywhere and managing exposure shouldn’t be limited to the capability of the offering. EarthSense’s full service comes with a host of capabilities such as air quality reports, source apportionment and bespoke modelling for visualising woodburning smoke emissions, tailpipe emissions and much more. So, whether it’s for diverting traffic, receiving air pollution alerts, or for managing children’s exposure, find out more by visiting the website: www.earthsense.co.uk

Image: Vladyslav Lytvyshchenko