11 Sep 2023Booking is now open for the ADMS User Group Meetings, 29-30 November 2023, York

You can now book your tickets for the 2023 ADMS User Group Meetings, which will be held at Malmaison York on 29th and 30th November.

• ADMS 6 User Group Meeting, 29th November
• ADMS-Urban and ADMS-Roads, 30th November

The annual ADMS User Group Meetings are a great opportunity to hear the latest ADMS model news and advice from CERC consultants and model developers, to hear talks by model users about their own applications of the software, and to network with other model users.

Tickets are available to order through Eventbrite until 23:30 on Tuesday 21st November. Organisations with a valid software support contract are entitled to one or more tickets free of charge depending on the type of licence held. The draft programme will be published soon.

25 Aug 2023Post-doctoral opportunities as part of a new Wellcome Trust funded health-centred West Midlands study

CERC are pleased to be collaborating with a multi-disciplined team on a new Wellcome Trust funded, West Midlands based project: “A Health-centred Systems Approach towards Net-Zero: Transforming regional climate mitigation policies”. The overall aim of WM-Net Zero is to transform regional Net-Zero policy solutions by adopting a health-centred systems approach.

WM-Net Zero brings together scientists from a range of disciplines (including social science, climate, air quality, data, health and economics) from the Universities of Birmingham, Surrey, and York, and stakeholders from West Midlands Combined Authority, Defra, Birmingham City Council, Clean Air Fund, Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council, Coventry City Council, Solihull Council and WSP in the UK to develop new tools and science understanding.

This work builds on CERC’s previous collaborations with the University of Birmingham, for example the successful West Midlands Air Quality Improvement Programme (WM-Air). Dr Jian Zhong, from the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, has published papers demonstrating how ADMS-Urban can be used to model baseline air quality over a large metropolitan domain and, of particular relevance to this new project, an investigation into impacts of net zero policies on air quality.

The WM-Net Zero team are currently recruiting for a research fellow (deadline 29th August) and an impact fellow (deadline 30th August).

About the image: This shows the reduction in annual mean NO2 (µg.m^-3) for (a) 2030 Net Zero Scenario (NZS) and (b) 2030 Electric Vehicles (EV) (transport decarbonisation) scenario relative to 2030 Business-As-Usual (BAU) scenario; and percentage change for (c) 2030 NZS and (d) 2030 EV scenario relative to 2030 BAU scenario.

21 Aug 2023Creation of an air pollution scenario impact tool

CERC has developed a digital air pollution impact tool to model the impacts of changes to air pollution sources and the adoption of mitigation measures, on levels of air pollution exposure. The tool is potentially scalable to all London local authorities, and could be a 'ground-breaking' example for city authorities around the world, as are CERC's Breathe London and airTEXT services.

This is a joint commission by Impact on Urban Health (IoUH) and Southwark and Lambeth Councils, who have a shared ambition to reduce the harmful impact air pollution has on people's health, particularly those most at risk.

CERC selected sensitive locations in Lambeth and Southwark according to the risk from air pollution exposure and focusing on areas of deprivation, according to Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD).

We used ADMS-Urban to calculate concentrations of NO₂, PM₁₀ and PM_2.5 at these locations and calculated the contribution of different source groups at each location.

Our findings allowed us to identify outcomes and measures that affect exposure to air pollution at each location, such as changes in traffic movements, emissions performance of vehicles, or the use of different fuels for heating and cooking. We modelled the impact of each measure on exposure to the pollutants at each sensitive receptor site.

Our web-based interactive tool encapsulates the model results and allows the user to view the impact of different combinations of mitigation measures.

We assessed the health impact of the mitigation measures using the modelled concentrations and population, age and health data. Our findings and the methodology used for the work can be found in our report. In two years' time, CERC will review the model, checking usability and updating inputs where new data has become available.

15 Jun 20232023 ADMS User Group Meetings: 29-30 November 2023, York

The 2023 ADMS User Group Meetings will be held at Malmaison Hotel, York, on the following dates:

• ADMS 6, Wednesday 29^th November
• ADMS-Urban and ADMS-Roads, Thursday 30^th November

The annual ADMS User Group Meetings are a great opportunity to hear the latest ADMS model news and advice from CERC consultants and model developers, to hear talks by model users about their own applications of the software, and to network with other model users. Tickets will be available to book through Eventbrite later this summer.

5 Jun 2023CERC awarded DfT aviation air quality modelling contract for ICAO CAEP

The UK Department for Transport (DfT) has awarded CERC a two year contract to carry out local air quality modelling of aviation emissions for the International Civil Aviation Organization Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection (ICAO CAEP).

The CAEP is a technical committee of the ICAO Council, which assists the Council in formulating new standards and recommended practices relating to the environmental impact of aviation.

One of ICAO's environmental goals is to limit or reduce the impact of aviation emissions on Local Air Quality. Since the late 1970s, ICAO has been developing measures to address emissions from aircraft engines and other airport sources in the vicinity of an airport.

To inform its assessment of the impacts of international aviation emissions, CAEP uses computer-based modelling and databases sponsored by Member States and international organisations participating in CAEP.

CERC's work under this contract will be under the auspices of the CAEP Modelling and Databases Group (MDG). Our work will include modelling test cases of the local air quality impacts of aircraft emissions for a range of airports. We will also investigate ways in which the modelling process might be streamlined and improved.

CERC's model ADMS-Airport will be used for this project. ADMS-Airport is one of the approved models for the ICAO CAEP MDG; it is listed in the ICAO Airport Air Quality Manual as a typical model used in the advanced and sophisticated approaches. Following the use of the model in DfT's Project for Sustainable Development of Heathrow (PSDH)—Adding Capacity at Heathrow, DfT's expert panel on modelling was in "full agreement in the recommendation of the CERC model ADMS-Airport for future modelling work at Heathrow".

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