Modeling Setup for Assessing the Impact of Stakeholders and Policy Scenarios on Air Quality at Urban Scale

ClairCity, a project funded by the EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, developed an innovative quantification framework aiming to assess environmental, health and economic impacts. The quantification framework consists of (i) an integrated urban module based on the household and dwelling characteristics, (ii) emission rates linked with on-road transport, (iii) emission data linked with the industrial, residential, commercial and institutional sectors, (iv) daily and hourly consumption profiles based on the energy and power generation data, (v) air quality patterns and related population exposure, (vi) health-related impacts and costs, and (vii) carbon footprint estimates.

This framework was applied for the baseline situation of 6 pilot cities. In particular, the second-generation Gaussian model URBAIR was setup and ran to simulate NO2 and particulate matter concentrations for distinct computational domains covering the urban area of each case study for the full baseline year of 2015.

The ClairCity impact assessment framework is applied to evaluate the impact of scenarios for 2025, 2035 and 2050, namely 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 outcomes of the assessment of impacts were used to inform the Policy Workshops for each case study to help decision-makers and local planners to define the final integrated Unified Scenario.