Title: Urban healthy living using satellite enabled air pollution monitoring & mitigation
Funder: UK Space Agency

Abstract: The project addresses how air pollution exposure affects wide swathes of public sector policy and programmes. Management and mitigation of adverse air pollution exposure, by integrating space-enabled technologies with other public-sector initiatives, offers prospects for smarter, more efficient operations, risk reduction and enhanced policy delivery in many key areas, notably healthcare and urban air quality management. Geospatial Insight Ltd will lead a closely-knit team of highly innovative SMEs to work in partnership with leading public authority stakeholders to demonstrate beneficial disruptive interventions in primary and secondary healthcare provision and urban planning through management of adverse ambient air pollution. The team will employ dynamic exposure mapping to identify air pollution hot spot zones and pollution exposure levels for two demonstration projects, in Bicester and Belfast. Health risk zones will be identified. Choices of alternative routing with lower exposure risks will be notified. Data sets will be provided to public sector end users via dashboard interfaces. Healthcare professional and cohorts can use mobile apps to manage their healthcare activities where avoidance of high air pollution exposure is desirable. A leading healthcare professional who is supporting this project states that “At present there is not a tool available to health care practitioners or the community to indicate how clean and healthy the air is. Equally, there is no indication as to where and when particular locations could be avoided to reduce the risk of being exposed to the damaging effects of pollutants.” Potential benefits for the public sector through uptake of outputs from the project demonstrations will go a long way to solve this dilemma. Uptake of outputs from the project demonstrations also offer potential benefit in policy planning and delivery at district, county and unitary local authorities in Great Britain and Northern Ireland in areas such as air quality management, transportation, land use planning, environmental protection etc. The cost to Government of health damage due to exposure to particulate air pollution, alone, is estimated at over £16 billion annually. Managing air pollution exposure effectively and efficiently offers the prospect of significant public-sector cost savings too.

Lay abstract: Urban air pollutants, especially airborne particulate matter and high nitrogen oxide concentrations are recognised as major threats to healthy urban living. Road transport and combustion of fossil fuels are the two leading sources of air pollution in urban environments. As satellite-derived data shows, pollution may be emitted locally or carried by air flow from more distant locations. Urban Air Quality Action Plans of local and municipal authorities advocate modal shift policies that reduce dependency on car journeys, promote cleaner public transport and encourage uptake of cycling and walking. To tackle the challenge, the projects team provided air pollution information to support public awareness and education campaigns. Data was available as RAW as well as in interactive web application. The project has confirmed that ambient air quality in Bicester and much of Belfast generally lies within the Low Risk range on the DEFRA Air Quality Index. However, we do report localised instances of significantly higher levels in certain localities due to innate traffic congestion and, perhaps more worryingly, abnormally high levels in the vicinity of the schools, the project has been able to provide supporting data and information to show the scale of the problem in a way that is not possible to do with the air quality monitoring facilities currently available. Trials with sensors inside vehicles, showed that pollution levels were consistently higher inside the vehicle than outside and that high pollution levels were retained inside the vehicle for some time after the vehicle had moved into cleaner air outside. By introducing the use of space data and services to what are generally considered to be terrestrial issues around citizen health and air pollution, UHL has created wider awareness in a number of local authority administrations of the potential for deploying satellite applications in a widening range of urban challenges. UK space sector SMEs stand to benefit as delivers of choice. Next Steps A proposal to the 2018 UK Space Agency-NHS Space for Health Call has been submitted and if selected, will exploit the outcomes from the Urban Healthy Living project. “UKSA support has enabled the Urban Healthy Living team to really drive forward the development of a service that allows the wider population, from traffic planners in local government to parents planning journey’s to school, to understand the impacts of poor air quality, and to make evidence-based decisions as a result. We’ve been able, using space data as a key source, to make the complex understandable and actionable, and UKSA funding has been invaluable in allowing this to happen” - Dave Fox, CEO of Geospatial Insight Ltd https://www.spaceforsmartergovernment.uk/case-study/geospatial-insight-ltd-air-pollution-exposure-management-in-public-health-and-urban-development/

Research activity codes: 3.2 INTERVENTIONS TO ALTER PHYSICAL AND BIOLOGICAL ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS;8.3 POLICY, ETHICS AND RESEARCH GOVERNANCE
Health categories: RESPIRATORY;GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE