In recent years, there has been a growing concern for the environment and a rush in a multitude of sectors to research and develop new ways to improve sustainability in a wide range of sectors. One sector of high importance is that concerned with road traffic in cities, where emissions produce severe effects on citizens’ health and the environment. New emerging technologies in transport are arriving and a change in urban mobility paradigm has begun. Over recent years, significant progress has been made in reducing emissions of key air pollutants from the transport sector. However, this sector is still one of the main contributors to urban air pollution in Europe and some traffic-related air quality problems remain in urban areas worldwide. Non-compliance with European air quality standards is often linked to traffic-related highly polluted microenvironments (hot-spots) that require local intervention in addition to city-scale plans and measures. This poses a unique opportunity to develop innovative tools needed to tackle urban air pollution.
To accurately understand the high concentrations of pollutants that occur in certain urban areas and their influence on the actual exposure of the population, it is necessary to estimate the contribution of road traffic to atmospheric emissions in great detail. Emission models are often used for this purpose can help us to understand traffic emissions processes and how to improve air quality in our cities.
With this in mind, the EU-funded project IRTEMS has helped to wider the knowledge on the development of high-resolution road-traffic-emission-modelling system that can be applied at city scale. During the action, research has focused on the implementation of instantaneous road transport emission modelling system with high resolution at city scale. A 2-year stay in the USA with experts on measuring and modelling emissions was successfully completed and a 1-year returning phase to the EU was carried out in an emission and air quality modelling reference group. Collaborations with enterprises of the transport sector and other research organizations with expertise on instantaneous traffic emission models were done through the action. This aspect reinforced the strong inter/multidisciplinary of the project to develop a powerful simulation system and to provide solutions involving different aspects to generate important impact on society.
This project was a career opportunity that has helped to generate new research lines. All the research results and knowledge generated during the project is openly accessible through scientific publications and several dissemination activities for different target audiences. This helped to involve different sectors on the research activities from the EU, increasing the interest of a wider part of the society, in this case, by contributing to a better air quality in accordance with the targets of the European climate action plan through the analysis of traffic emissions.
In conclusion, this action has contributed to significantly progress on the scientific knowledge about road transport emission models and their application for microscale studies at city-scale and has set the basics for the development of a future tool to provide accurate citywide emission results.
