PROJECT DESCRIPTION
BACKGROUND
The urban environment is a major concern for citizens and local authorities, particularly with regard to noise and local air pollution. Policy making at local, regional, national and EU level strongly affects the urban environment in cities. To be able to improve the urban environment, authorities and citizens need to be well informed of its current state and future prospects. A great deal of information has become available on the urban environment in the form of data, knowledge and models. However, that information is mainly used at national level and to support local decisions with regard to individual emission sources or certain source groups. A comprehensive overview of the urban environment, covering all sources and all relevant spatial scales, as well as changes in the environment and the impact of measures, was not available before the Urbis project, neither for air pollution or for noise.
OBJECTIVES
The aim of the project is to develop an Urban Information System (URBIS). This system integrates already existing data, models, Dutch standard calculation procedures and a Geographical Information System (GIS) into one local air pollution and noise model system. The output of URBIS includes maps and tables that present, among others, emission and transmission of air pollution and noise, as well as risks for citizens. The system is meant to be used for: - supporting the environmental decision making by authorities at various levels, and - improving the communication on local air pollution and noise with citizens as well as other sectors of the community.
RESULTS
Urbis is a methodology for calculating spatial distribution of air pollution and noise and the associated health risks for municipalities. The methodology describes the current and possible future states by means of maps and indicators of the environmental quality and risks. It also produces overviews of sources and their relative contributions. The steps in the processing of data by Urbis correspond with the steps in the cause-effect chain, where societal activities lead to emissions of air pollution and noise. Due to dispersion (air pollution) and transmission (noise) this affects the environmental quality, i.e. concentrations and noise load increase. Consequently, exposures occurs for people, subsequently leading to risks (annoyance, short-term physical reactions, illness, or death). - Often, information on activities must be processed to make it suitable input for URBIS. Data on noise and air pollution by road traffic are usually available as activity data (traffic density , velocity , etc.). - With the help of emission models, Urbis calculates emissions from activity data. For some sources emission data are directly available, for example noise emission data for factories may be made available in acoustic reports. - With the help of dispersion models or transmission models Urbis calculates the environmental quality from emissions in terms of noise levels or concentrations. In doing so, environmental data like ground surface type and building configurations are used. - In combining the micro-scale calculated environmental quality with information about the location of houses and numbers of inhabitants, exposures of dwellings and inhabitants are estimated. - Next, the calculated exposure can be combined with exposure/response relations to estimated risks, for example the risk of serious noise annoyance or the risk of lethal effects. These estimates can be combined into, for example, the anticipated number of people experiencing serious annoyance by noise or the anticipated life span reduction. Finally , the results (environmentally hazardous activities, emissions, concentrations/noise pollution, risks) are processed and presented in maps, tables, and indicators. The most important advantages of calculation methods in Urbis are : - Available data on activities can be converted to environmental data. - Calculation methods quantify the causal connection between activities and environmental problems. For example, the relative contribution of municipal activities can be visualised. Another advantage is that future states of the environment can be calculated on the basis of activity scenarios. - Calculation models can be used for grids covering the whole area instead of only a few measuring points. Urbis uses receptor points at every 10 meters in the immediate vicinity of the source (for example at locations near kerbs and at the fronts of the first row of houses) and reguIar grids with points at every other 25 meters for the rest of the area. Consequently, the results are suitable to draw up high-resolution maps of the municipal environment.
