European research initiatives

European Commission DG Research — 01 Jun 2010

The European Union supports environmental research into a wide spectrum of projects including many concerned with air pollution and health through its framework research programmes.

Clean Air For Europe programme (CAFE) — 01 Jun 2010

The CAFE programme was established to support the European Commission’s development of the Thematic Strategy on air pollution, the Directive on Ambient Air Quality and Cleaner Air for Europe and its Impact Assessment.

European Consortium for Modelling of Air Pollution and Climate Strategies (EC4MACS) — 01 Jun 2010

Funded by the EU-LIFE programme, EC4MACS is a consortium of European institutions that build and maintain a network of well established modelling tools for a comprehensive integrated assessment of the policy effectiveness of emission control strategies for air pollutants and greenhouse gases. The project will support the revision of the EU’s Thematic Strategy on Air Pollution and the European Climate Change Programme on policies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions beyond 2012.

Global Monitoring for the Environment and Security (GMES) – Atmosphere Services — 01 Jun 2010

GMES is a European initiative which uses satellites and in-situ sensors to monitor the natural environment. It brings data and information providers together with users, so they can better understand each other and make environmental and security-related information available to the people who need it through new enhanced services. These include Atmosphere Services that support such tasks as gauging the effect of greenhouse gases and aerosols on climate change, on air quality, and on levels of ultraviolet radiation.

MACC - Monitoring Atmospheric Composition and Climate (GMES) — 01 Jun 2010

MACC is a pre-operational atmospheric service of the European GMES programme. MACC provides data records on atmospheric composition for recent years, data for monitoring present conditions and forecasts of the distribution of key constituents for a few days ahead. State-of-the-art atmospheric modelling is combined with Earth observation data to provide information services covering eg European air quality, climate, and UV.

GEMS - Global and regional Earth-system (atmosphere) Monitoring using Satellite and in-situ data — 01 Jun 2010

GEMS was an EU-funded project developing comprehensive data analysis and modelling systems for monitoring the global distributions of atmospheric constituents important for climate, air quality and UV radiation, with a focus on Europe. The systems provided a basis for data and information services to be developed as part of Europe's GMES initiative.

PROMOTE - Protocol monitoring for GMES atmosphere — 01 Jun 2010

PROMOTE was developed as a service element for atmosphere under GMES. PROMOTE delivered services and data on multiple atmospheric issues to end-users, focusing on stratospheric ozone, surface ultraviolet radiation, air quality, and greenhouse gases. Its activities included integrating existing ground based air quality networks with models and newly available satellite measurements on air pollution in order to generate accurate daily information on air pollution levels over Europe.

NATAIR - Improving and Applying Methods for the Calculation of Natural and Biogenic Emissions and Assessment of Impacts on Air Quality — 01 Jun 2010

The project was aimed at the improvement of methods for the calculation of natural and biogenic emissions from various sources, the application of these methods to provide emission data for 2000 and 2010 and the assessment of impacts on air quality policy implementation.

City Delta - an inter-comparison of long-term model responses to urban-scale emission-reduction scenarios. — 01 Jun 2010

As a contribution to the modelling activities in the CAFE programme, an open model inter-comparison exercise was launched by the JRC-IES in collaboration with EMEP, IIASA and EUROTRAC to explore the changes in urban air quality predicted by different atmospheric chemistry-transport (CTM) dispersion models in response to changes in urban emissions.

The European Environment and Health Information System (ENHIS) — 01 Jun 2010

The ENHIS project, an international effort co-funded by the European Commission and coordinated by WHO/Europe, was carried out in two phases. As a follow-up of the first ENHIS project, ENHIS-2 ran from 2005 to 2007 and started the operation of a comprehensive information and knowledge system to help identify, prioritize and address wide-spread environmental health problems in countries and to enable monitoring the effects of actions taken.

ESPREME - integrated assessment of heavy metal releases in Europe — 01 Jun 2010

The aim of ESPREME was to develop methods and to identify strategies to support EU environmental policy-making for reducing the emissions and thus the harmful impacts of heavy metals (HMs). The core aim of the research was to carry out damage assessment considering heavy metals to the environment and human health in the long term. The priority metals mercury, cadmium, lead, nickel, arsenic and chromium were covered.

TNO heavy metals and POPs studies — 01 Jun 2010

TNO has recently compiled emission inventories of heavy metals and POPs in Europe, including future projections (2010-2020). The studies are a continuation of earlier emission inventories carried out by TNO and form the basis for an evaluation of the effectiveness of the UNECE protocols; they have been presented to various policy-making committees such as the EMEP Steering body and the UNECE Working Group on strategies and review

PEOPLE project - Population Exposure to Air Pollutants in Europe — 01 Jun 2010

The PEOPLE project has been assessing outdoor, indoor and personal exposure levels of air pollutants in European cities, focusing on emissions from transport and smoking.

APMoSPHERE (Air Pollution Modelling for Support to Policy on Health and Environmental Risks in Europe). — 01 Jun 2010

This project was established under the GMES initiative to develop high resolution spatial datasets of both emissions (1x1 km for EU-15) and air pollutant concentrations across the EU. The study had an objective of providing data that was both comprehensive and at a sufficient spatial resolution to enable analysis of the distribution of air pollution and the potential associated impacts on health.

AirMonTech — 01 Mar 2011

AirMonTech is an EU FP7 project compiling information to harmonize current air pollution monitoring techniques and to advise on future monitoring technologies and strategy.