AWAIR Project
(Environmental integrated, multilevel knowledge and approaches to counteract critical air pollution events, improving vulnerable citizens quality of life in Central Europe functional urban areas)
The AWAIR project addresses the problem of air quality as a common challenge for those territories in Central Europe characterised by strong anthropogenic pressures and frequent stagnant air conditions. Priority attention is devoted to acute episodes and in particular to the implementation of actions aimed at reducing air pollutant levels and safeguarding citizens' health.
The project intends, therefore, to collect existing knowledge and exploit the partners' experience in order to define an appropriate set of mitigation and adaptation actions, promoting an integrated management system of acute pollution episodes at a supra-urban level (Functional Urban Areas).
The project, financed by Interreg for a total amount of 1,936,000 euro, is coordinated by ARPAE - Emilia Romagna, and has as Italian partners the Municipality of Parma and the CINSA Consortium (National Inter-University Consortium for Environmental Sciences). The University of Parma is involved with the local unit of the CINSA Consortium, responsible for communication and dissemination activities. Among the participants are also three organisations interested in the results: the Associazione per l'Aiuto ai Giovani Diabetici, the Azienda Unità Sanitaria Locale di Parma and the Centro di Etica Ambientale.
The data says that many cases of illness, and even deaths, depend on air pollutants, and throughout Europe there is a need to go beyond the usual measures with which we try to limit citizens' exposure. This is why it is important to have involved other European countries in addition to Italy, in order to focus research activities on areas where extreme pollution episodes occur every winter, those that are associated with traffic blocks, or restrictions on the use of heating.
In addition to Parma, the city areas and municipalities of Budapest (Hungary), Graz (Austria) and Katowice (Poland), and the Helmholtz Zentrum research institute in Munich (Germany) are participating.
As winter will undoubtedly be the most critical period to follow, the Municipality of Parma and CINSA will work together to devise appropriate strategies to tackle these phenomena.
The project aims to develop new monitoring methods, and new indicators that can tell whether the measures taken by local administrators are effective in reducing pollutant emissions. Above all, attention will be paid to the most vulnerable sections of the population, to ensure that it is they who are protected.
The next three years will tell us whether the group of eight institutes and bodies that has come together under the leadership of ARPAE will have succeeded. The next meeting will be held in Bologna on 19 September, where the project will be presented to a large audience in the presence of all Italian and European partners.
The CINSA Consortium is participating with Prof. Elena Maestri and Director Prof. Nelson Marmiroli, both professors at the Department of Chemical, Life and Environmental Sustainability Sciences at the University of Parma.