UWE to play role in European cities air quality work
Bristol’s University of the West of England is to play a key part in pan-European air quality work
A consortium of universities and research institutions, led by Dutch consultancy Trinomics, has won a €6.7 million EU-funded project to actively engage European citizens in six countries to research their personal impact on air quality and CO2 emissions in their cities.
Air quality researchers at the University of the West of England in Bristol are to be involved in the project with UWE Bristol’s Dr Enda Hayes to be its technical director.
In a statement, Trinomics said that the project will use tools such as specially made apps and games for smart phones to generate citizen-led policies to improve air-related health in our cities.
Under the project, to be called, CLAiR-City, thousands of people across Europe will be invited to share their views on how to reduce air pollution and improve related public health in six pilot cities. Residents will use a specially created game on their smartphones, tablets and laptops to suggest how their home cities should develop in the future. The results, said Trinomics, will be directly translated in improved city policies.
Four-year
Cities across Europe will be involved in development of the CLAiR-city air quality project
The four-year CLAiR-City project, is funded through the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme and features 16 research partners including the pilot cities of Bristol; Amsterdam; Portugal’s Aveiro region; Ljubljana in Slovenia; Sosnowiec, Poland; and the Liguria region, Italy.
Responses gathered from players will form a ‘people’s vision’ spelling out to civic leaders exactly how the cities should be shaped over the next 35 years — and what measures need to be taken to improve air quality, reduce CO2e emissions and diminish negative health effects.
UWE Bristol’s Dr Enda Hayes, who has been appointed as technical director of CLAiR-City, said a bold approach was being taken because all other efforts were struggling to combat air pollution, a problem responsible for the deaths of more than 400,000 people in Europe every year.
He noted that: “Up to a third of Europeans living in cities are exposed to pollutant levels exceeding EU air quality standards, with approximately 90% affected according to the World Health Organization’s more stringent guidelines.”
Dr Hayes, an asssociate professor and director of the Air Quality Management Resource Centre at UWE Bristol, said: “Air quality management is failing in many cities around the world. This is an exciting and innovative project to try to address one of the key issues — how do you empower citizens to define their own solution?
Game technology
“Using game technology as an engagement platform means everyone’s voice and opinion is valued. If you run traditional workshops or surveys it can be that the quiet voices get lost and the reach can be limited. With our game, everyone’s voice is equal and we can all be experts on our own city.”
Dr Hayes added: “To date, air quality policy has primarily been focussed on technology and technological solutions. Instead of apportioning the pollution to the technology (e.g. cars), this project will apportion it to people and our behaviour (e.g. why do we use our cars).
“By apportioning pollution to behaviour and practises, we want to give people a better understanding of how their behaviour generates pollution. If they change their behaviour it can have a substantial impact on a city. The innovation lies in how we are bringing social science into our data analysis and then engaging city citizens with that data to help them visualise and define their city’s future.”
Ljubljana is one of the group of pilot cities where residents will be involved in the research
The game, being developed by UWE’s in-house gaming studio PlayWest, will give the player the chance to outline how they would like to live, behave and interact in their city up to 2050. Responses from players will lead to the creation of a ‘citizen-led future city scenario’ which will be delivered to city leaders as a ‘policy package’ document setting out what changes they would eventually like to see introduced.
Dr Hayes said: “We wanted to empower citizens to define their futures and use that to influence policy. We are using game technology to engage a wider population and to envision what a city looks like in 2050 so the project is particularly relevant to younger people.
“Also involved in the project is UWE Bristol’s Science Communication Unit, whose internationally-recognised expertise in public engagement and dissemination will help enhance the reach of the study.”
Transport
The project will also involve detailed data and policy analysis, with a study of existing evidence on themes such as energy and transport at a local, national and European level. It will explore six cities in detail but will also generate data which could be utilised by all EU cities with a population of more than 50,000.
Ten members of staff from UWE Bristol — which has received over £980,000 (€1.25m) of the total funding – will be involved including members of the Air Quality Resource Management Resource Centre, Science Communication Unit and PlayWest.
Jeroen van der Laan, of economic policy consultancy Trinomics, the project coordinator, said: “We are very excited to start implementing our CLAiR-City project over the next four years with the excellent group of Europe’s leading research organisations and frontrunner cities we have in our consortium. CLAiR-City will develop innovative approaches and means of communication to inform European citizens about the air quality in their cities and engage them in forming ideas and pathways on how their living environment should look like in 2050.”
UWE’s Assistant Vice Chancellor for Environment & Sustainability, Professor Jim Longhurst, said: “CLAiR-City is a great example of how different expertise can be blended together across the university, and indeed Europe, to build imaginative and effective responses to the profound environmental and public health challenges we face.”
Citizen Led Air pollution Reduction in Cities (CLAiR-City) Consortium Members: