H2020 Claircity project: Assessment of air quality impacts for Bristol City Council

© 2019 Harmonisation within Atmospheric Dispersion Modelling for Regulatory Purposes, HARMO. All rights reserved.ClairCity is a European project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. The project applies an innovative quantification framework developed to assess environmental, health and economic impacts. The quantification framework was applied and calibrated for the baseline situation of the ClairCity pilot case study – a UK city. The second-generation Gaussian model URBAIR was set-up to simulate NO2 and particulate matter concentrations. The simulation results point out several exceedances of NO2 concentrations, while the PM10 and PM2.5 concentrations are lower than the EU annual legal limit values all over the study area. The ClairCity impact assessment framework was then applied to evaluate the impact of scenarios considering 3 time horizons: 2025, 2035 and 2050. The scenarios consist of the Business As Usual (BAU) scenario and 3 additional scenarios translating the expectations of citizens and local experts based on data collected through engagement process. The most ambitious scenario – Scenario 3 – favours banning and charging vehicles for entry into the city, the subsidization of public transport and using area planning actively to minimize the length of commuting and the necessity for travel. This scenario also focus on households energy efficiency and banning solid fuels for new households. The numerical results point out a maximum decrease of 62% of NO2 concentrations for the most ambitious scenario in 2050, compared with a decrease of 37% in the BAU scenario in 2025.