Pollution radar
When London signed up to be an Olympic host that meant complying with international pollution regulations. As the Olympics and Paralympics is expected to attract 11 million visitors and 3 million extra car journeys on its busiest day, to have any hope of achieving this, London commuters are being encouraged to consider green transport options in the hope that normal traffic can be reduced by 30%. Researchers at The University of Leicester’s Air Quality Group will be using the Olympic games to test their CityScan technology and monitor the effect of the changed traffic on emissions.

The CityScan project began life as part of space technology project at Surrey Satellite Technology Limited to develop a spectrometer for measuring air quality in space. The University of Leicester team got involved to develop its application for urban environments and this is now funded as part of the ClearfLo (Clean Air for London) Project.  ClearfLo is a collaborative scientific project involving several academic institutions in the UK,to set up sites across London to monitor air pollution.

3D Mapping
Group member Rosemarie Graves explains, ‘our instruments work by measuring scattered sunlight to give a measure of trace gas, here nitrogen dioxide, concentrations along specific lines of sight.’ Nitrogen dioxide causes lung problems such as bronchitis and asthma.

CityScan can map out the air quality over every part of the city, even in playgrounds and specific buildings and not just pollution ‘hotspots’ already covered by existing technology. CityScan can also record the days and times when pollution levels are at their highest.

Urban planning tool
The three locations for the sensors include a 30-storey building in North Kensington and a 14-storey building in Chelsea, in the west of the city. The sensors will give readings of nitrogen dioxide levels produced by the traffic emissions during the games. The team’s biggest challenge will be analysing all the data, as this is the first time data covering so much terrain has been collected.

Graves says, ‘we hope that we can demonstrate the capability of CityScan to local councils and urban planners in areas that may affect changes in policies.’ They hope the Olympic project will help them move CityScan on from the scientific research instrument arena, to an off-the-shelf tool for monitoring air quality.