Research project to ‘revolutionise’ air pollution forecasting

Researchers at the University of Warwick and The Alan Turing Institute have won research funding worth £619,000 from EPSRC (The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) for a project that aims to help keep London’s air clean.

The funding will enable researchers to build on their existing work on air quality and simulation-based inference to revolutionise pollution forecasting by combining modern machine learning and statistical methodology.

The project will develop techniques based on the simulation of large numbers of pollution particles so researchers can better estimate and quantify them as they evolve over time.

The project is led by the Department of Statistics, and Department Computer Science at the University of Warwick. Project partners from The Alan Turing Institute’s data centric engineering programme which is supported by the Lloyds Register Foundation, have committed resources of over £300,000; with the Greater London Authority (GLA) committing further in-kind contributions, via staff time, complementary projects and new data sources. 

The project will also fund two postdoctoral researchers for the next three years.

Dr Adam Johansen, from the Department of Statistics at Warwick and leader of the project said: ‘This is an exciting opportunity to develop techniques from computational statistics and advanced machine learning to make a step change in the monitoring and prediction of air quality in major urban environments.

‘Involvement from stakeholders including the Greater London Authority will ensure that the project has genuine and lasting impact.’

Co-investigator Dr Theo Damoulas, deputy programme director for Data Centric Engineering (DCE) at the Turing, added:

‘I’m delighted that the Turing’s DCE programme will continue to actively support this important research at the interface of several of our areas of strength that will allows us to contribute to one of the 21st-century grand challenges.’

Photo Credit – The University of Warwick.