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Laser remote sensing for monitoring air pollution over cities

Project description

Improving the health of urban societies through better air quality

In the modern urban environment, poor air quality is an important societal and economic issue, responsible for a large number of premature deaths and major financial loses. Therefore, detailed monitoring of harmful air pollutants and their sources is crucial to give an accurate representation of air quality. Existing monitoring methods often lack the necessary resolution and accuracy to provide adequate measurements. The EU-funded PM-scanner project will build on existing technology to create an air quality monitoring instrument capable of highly accurate and timely measurements. The instrument is based on cutting-edge laser technology that uses AI to revolutionise how air quality is measured, thus improving urban well-being throughout Europe.

Objective

"Poor air quality in cities around the world is a major societal and economic issue, causing more than 5.5 million premature deaths and resulting in €4.3 trillion in welfare losses. Preserving and improving the public health requires effective monitoring of air pollutants from their sources to their transport within the city web, however existing air quality monitoring networks have either very low spatial resolution or low accuracy to serve this purpose. Building on the technology solutions developed within the D-TECT ERC CoG, our project aims to cover this gap by commercializing the ""PM-scanner"", a remote sensing instrument which will monitor particulate matter (PM) concentration over large areas with unprecedented accuracy and high spatial and temporal resolution. Briefly, the instrument will emit laser pulses and observe the intensity and polarization state of the backscatter light as it travels in the atmosphere; these data will be analysed using dedicated Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms to provide PM2.5 and PM10 concentration at multiple locations above a city. We envision that the PM-scanner will be a powerful tool to regional governments, environmental protection agencies and polluting industries, allowing effective real-time monitoring of pollution agents and supporting data-driven air quality policies and actions. Within the proposed PoC project, we aim to verify the innovation potential of the PM-scanner idea by establishing a defensible IP position, building a realistic demonstrator of the PM data products based on the D-TECT Wall-E lidar prototype, and validating our approach by interacting with stakeholders in the envisaged value chain."

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Keywords

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

ERC-POC - Proof of Concept Grant

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) ERC-2020-PoC

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Host institution

ETHNIKO ASTEROSKOPEIO ATHINON
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 150 000,00
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

No data

Beneficiaries (1)

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