uCARe is a project funded by the European Union (H2020 LC-MG-1-1-2018) with the aim to reduce the impact of transport on air quality. The project has a 36 months duration and started on the 1st of May 2019. The budget is 3 million Euro, spent on 288 person months by 14 partners.
The ambition of uCARe is to reduce the overall pollutant emissions of the existing vehicle fleet to improve air quality with impact on, among others, the environment and people’s health.
To achieve this, uCARe has:
• provided vehicle users with simple, insightful and effective tools to decrease their individual emissions;
• supported stakeholders with an interest in local air quality in selecting feasible intervention strategies that lead to the desired user behaviour.
Standardised data
There is a great deal of data on pollutant emissions available in the uCARe consortium. The uCARe project has made these data publicly available in so-called Augmented Engine Maps (AEMs). An AEM provides the pollutant emissions for a specific car model and make. The AEM shows how, for instance, the NOx emissions depend on speed and CO2 for a hot engine, but also for a cold engine. Other emission maps include non-tailpipe emissions such as wear emissions from tires and brakes. This data was used for developing tools that give drivers advice on how to reduce their pollutant emissions.
Driver awareness of behaviour influence
To make drivers aware of the effect of their driving behaviour, uCARe published a set of tools, including:
• Video clips for a do-it-yourself evaluation of the driver’s car. These videos show how to use low costs household materials to evaluate the pollutant emissions produced by the car, and how the driver’s behaviour influences these emissions.
• Simple tests with lab-grade equipment to assess the pollutant emissions of individual cars. For instance, at a car fair, or a fleet of cars at specific locations ( e.g. near a school playground.
• Sensor-readings based tools to provide feedback to the driver. Simple feedback is given during the trip; more complex feedback was provided after a trip. The uCARe team believes that specific feedback is more effective than more general recommendations.
Pilots
Organisations such as cities, ‘green’ NGOs and drivers’ associations that want to use the above mentioned tools to set up campaigns to change the drivers’ behaviour, could receive support from the uCARe project, but because of COVID this was hardly accomplished. The support consisted of providing all materials to perform a pilot for the campaign. uCARe also assessed the impact of the planned campaign based on the results of the pilot. As much as possible uCARe has made results, including lessons learned from the pilots, publicly available to allow for its use during and beyond the project duration.
