Valuta l’aria (Rate the Air), the new survey on the perception of Air quality by the citizen of the Po basin opens today.

The second edition of the survey is carried out by ART-ER within LIFE PrepAIR’s project activities.

Valuta l’aria wants to look into the perception and awareness of the citizens of the Po Basin as far as concern air pollution and the related behavior to improve the situation.

The survey is carried out in the territory of Valle d’Aosta, Piemonte, Lombardia, Emilia-Romagna, Veneto,
Friuli Venezia Giulia and Trentino, an critic area for air quality for particulate, Nitrogen Oxyde, Ozone ever since the entering into force of the AQ limits of the European Union.

Participating to the survey you will contribute to the creation of a wood area for pollinating insects and to the installatiuon of bee hives that Project PrepAIR will donate to reduce CO2 emissions and safeguard biodiversity in collaboration with Wownature by Etifor S.r.l.  and Beeing, technical partner of “Save the Queen” project by Legambiente.

Click here to answer to the survey!

 

 

Today and Yesterday (22-23 november), PrepAIR’s  partners have met in Udine hosted by Regione Friuli Venezia Giulia in the splendid halls of Antonini-Belgrano palace for the XII project meeting.

The meeting was the occasion to check the advancement of the action on Air Quality carried on by the project partners and to schedule the activities a year before project’s conclusion.

The results of the Analysis of the woody biomass flow for energetic use in the Po basin, a Survey carried out by the working group lead by ARPA Veneto within LIFE Prepair’s activities, have been published as a scientific paper titled Heating energy balance and biomass consumption for the residential sector in the Po Valley  by the peer-reviewed journal Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments n° 54 of 2022.

The article is the rtesult of the collaboration between ARPA Veneto (Silvia Pillon and Laura Susanetti) and University of Padua (Marco Marigo, Fabio zulli e Michele Carli).

The paper is not freely available online while the report  of the survey on the same topic is available here (in Italian, English abstract only).

OJAP Open Journal of Air Pollution has recently published the submission of PrepAIR’s partner ARPA Lombardia: a paper titled “Atmospheric Emission Sources in the Po-Basin from the LIFE-IP PREPAIR Project” by Alessandro Marongiu, Elisabetta Angelino, Marco Moretti, Giulia Malvestiti and Giuseppe Fossati.

The paper presents the focus on emission estimates in the Italian Regions of the Po-basin obtained by the development of a common air pollutant emission dataset on the Po-basin and Slovenia foreseen in LIFE PrepAIR project . The objective is to update emission inventories developed by the environmental protection agencies and regions of Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna, Piedmont, Veneto, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Valle d’Aosta, the province of Bolzano (participating as stakeholder) and the province of Trento. A data flux is defined considering the activities on emission estimates by the different administrations according to the current Italian legislation. This activity has allowed the completion of two different datasets on the area for 2013 and 2017.

The full article is availabe here.

 

 

From 12th to 14th September a representative of  LIFE PrepAIR,  joined more than 50 representatives of LIFE integrated projects in Finland to attend to the Workshop on EU Life Integrated Projects – What did we learn?

The workshop has been hosted by the Finnish Ministry of Environment with the participation of the European Commission. The event’s goal was to gather conclusions and recommendations from the latest full funding period and share insight into the future of the LIFE funding instrument.

The event was also an occasion to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the EU funding instrument for the environment and climate action and a great occasion for networking.

 

 

Among the various thematic pillars tackled by LIFE PrepAir project – significant attention has been given to the topic of energy efficiency in public buildings: in particular, as far as concern training of public officials, the focus has been on CAM, Minimum Environmental Criteria, which became mandatory by law as of 2016 and now are a fundamental tool for Green Public Procurement policy enhancement in Italy.

In this regard, PrepAir’s partners have developed various initiatives : with the project now coming to an end, the results of these activities were presented the 9th of june in Trento, during a conference entitled ‘Energy Efficiency and Public Bodies’ organised by the Province of Trento , in the presence of the partners and the main stakeholders.

The event was part of the New European Bauhaus Festival: the ‘New European Bauhaus’, recently launched by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, is an initiative that harks back to the famous architectural movement of the XXth century, and promotes a new lifestyle for Europe – sensitive, inclusive and accessible – integrated with the concepts of the green deal.

Concepts that fits perfecly with research and materials produced by PrepAir in the area of energy efficiency the circular economy, and even more in view of future initiatives linked to the Resilienace and Renovation National Plan and structural funds.

Over the months, the project produced and proposed to stakeholders several otputs related to the topic of Minimun Environmental Criteria (even more than originally planned), registering great interest everywhere. As a result, four manuals have been published, intended for the Public Administration, which delve into the subject of the Minimum Environmental Criteria in as many application areas (construction, energy services, public lighting and public green areas); several training workshops have been held, in various areas of the Po Valley basin; a database on existing environmental certifications, and their correspondence to CAM; and three articulated e-learning modules have been implemented, which have involved and trained more than 900 users, mostly public officials or professionals in the sector.

The conference was also an opportunity to present the work done on the infopoint on the energy requalification of public buildings to support municipal officials, available at: https://info.lifeprepair.eu/

Lastly, the topic of Energy Communities and the role of local authorities was addressed, with an in-depth look at the coordination work carried out by the province of Trento in its own territory and a comparison between the various stakeholders. The topic of energy communities is on the agenda of numerous tables, and the conference allowed for a fruitful discussion in order to clear up some doubts and deepen those that are still unresolved. Several representatives of Trentino municipalities interested in setting up energy communities in the area participated.

“The issue of air quality can only be tackled successfully if it is dealt with in an integrated manner between its various aspects,’ he said during the meeting. There is a need to create a system between all the players involved: and the Public Administration, at every territorial level, must set an example, using all the levers in its possession to transfer this European strategic vision within which our work is developed to the various local spheres.

Dowload the slides (in italian)

Look at the pictures

 

In the final months of its long journey, the LIFE PrepAir project has been presented in Brussels during the conference entitled ‘Improving air quality together’ at the headquarters of the Emilia-Romagna delegation to the EU.

Air pollution has always been one of the main problems in the Po Valley area, also due to its geomorphological characteristics. In recent years, the project has contributed to a considerable improvement of the situation, thanks to a series of important results and inputs.

First of all, thanks to PrepAir, the topic has been tackled in an increasingly joint manner among the various partners and increasingly integrated among the various operational sectors (from production activities to agriculture and the environment). This has enabled the growth of a scientific community of reference, capable of providing a solid basis for monitoring the effects of the various actions tested and identifying the most effective ones in terms of building future scenarios.

As a result and equally important it has been the work done in terms of stimulating the government, ever since the fundamental agreement signed in Turin during Clean Air Dialogue in 2019.

In practical terms, PrepAir made it possible to devise and test important methods and tools to better study the issue, also addressing it at a sectoral level: monitoring the various pollutants, the various sources of pollution, the results recorded for specific areas and for different periods of the year.

Even the situation following 2020 lockdown – which, of course, was unpredictable at the start of the project – has been exploited to monitor the situation during a long and unprecedent period characterized by almost no vehicular traffic. It was thus discovered that the concentration of certain pollutants had decreased less than expected in the Po basin during the lockdown weeks: confirming that vehicular pollution is only one of the cause of poor air quality. Emissions from biomass domestic heating, as well as sewage manure in agriculture (which releases pollutants such as ammonia and nitrogen oxides) are equally important impacts.

The results achieved in each of the pillars were extensively summarised at the Brussels meeting by the project leaders, who took turns in presenting them.

The participation of François Wakenhut, head of the European Commission’s Clean Air Unit (a Commission that has sanctioned Italy on two occasions in recent years with regard to the excessive concentration of pollutants: in 2019 for PM10 and recently for nitrogen oxides) was particularly significant. In fact, Wakenhut took note of the numerous activities carried out by the various project partners in recent years and the evident progress made, congratulating them and encouraging Italy to continue in this direction.

Compliments that were also reiterated in the speech by Angelo Salsi, LIFE project manager for the European Union. The meeting was also attended by Joanne Swets, coordinator of the AIR network of European regions.

At the end of the day, the docufilm ‘C’è aria per te! (You’ve got Air!)’, a medium-length film produced by the project that will be available for screening by local broadcasters, at festivals and similar occasions.

Click here to dowload the slides of the conference.

Visit our virtual poster session

Look at the pictures of the event

The technical report “Evaluation of emission reduction scenarios on air quality in Po Valley” is available for download on the LIFE PrepAIR website. The report is the result of the work of ARPAE and ARPA Piemonte with the contribution of the Environment Agency network of project PrepAIR.

The aim of the document is to contribute to the discussion of the revision of European air quality rules in connection with the new  recommendation on pollutant concentration included in the World Health Organisation’s new AIR Quality Global Guidelines

In order to evaluate  the possibility of achieving the new air quality limits in the Po basin, the NINFA CTM Modelling system has been used to carried out several simulations of targeted emission reduction scenarios.

The full report is available here.

 

 

The Air Quality Assessment Report for Po Basin and Slovenia in 2020 is available for download.

The document is the result of the work of the environmental Agencies’ Network which are partner of the LIFE Prepair projects: ARPAE Emilia-Romagna and ARPA Piemonte (coordinators of the action), ARPA Friuli Venezia Giulia, ARPA Veneto, ARPA Lombardia, ARPA VAlle d’Aosta, APPA Trento e ARSO Slovenia.

This first assessment report of action D5 provides a synthetic view on the state of air quality in the Po Valley and Slovenia for year 2020 and examines PM10, PM2.5, nitrogen dioxide and ozone, which are the pollutants whose concentration values more frequently exceed legislation thresholds.  The assessment was carried out with data fusion techniques using model output and monitoring data collected by action C1 of the PREPAIR project. Even though four data fusion modelling systems with different setup (resolution, boundary condition, meteorological data and data fusion technique) have been used, the model outputs are very similar to each other. In this report the assessment methodology, the data fusion technique and results of the most critical indicators compared to the limit values established by the 2008/50/EC Directive are shown.

On june the 2nd, FLA – Fondazione Lombardia per l’Ambiente will present its experience on PrepAIRed!, the action of LIFE Prepair project dedicated to education  on air quality in schools, at the second international conference of Scuola Democratica – Reinventing School.

Air pollution is a global threat and one of the first attempts to human health. The WHO estimates that the deaths caused reach 4.2 million connected  the dropout in  non communicable diseases like stroke, heart disease, lung cancer, acute and chronic respiratory diseases. Around 91% of the world’s population lives in places where air quality levels exceed WHO limits. Air pollution is indeed a major problem, and in Italy special attention is needed in the Po’ basin where orographic and meteorological conditions contribute to have higher level of several pollutant beyond the limit. A common effort among regions is then essential as well a diffuse awareness among at local community level.
Educational programs to air quality since early school became a primary driver to be triggered and support a conscious engagement of future citizens in the implementation of air quality policies.
PREPAIR is a project aimed at harmonizing, supporting and strengthening the measures established in the regional plans and within the agreement of the Po Valley on a larger scale The ultimate goal of PREPAIR is to guarantee the sustainability of results and the empowerment of regulatory agencies. .Within the PREPAIR project.
PrepAIRed! is the action aimed at designing, testing and implementing different target-oriented training courses aimed at raising awareness and strengthening knowledge in the school system (teachers and students) on the issues of air quality covered by the project.
PrepAIRed! tries to achieve its objectives through an innovative didactic approach in order to foster the concept of “air as common good”. The educational path is divided in 5 modules representing the most impactful determinants of air quality and each module is organized in 3 learning phases reflecting the I-E-A paradigm: Information Experience and Action.
The I-E-A paradigm is based on constructivism theory ( Rivoltella, 2014 ) and constructivism techniques like flipped classroom and episodes of situated learning are implemented within the didactic proposal. The educational path is supported by a composite e-learning platform to support cooperative learning and to offer dedicated virtual spaces for teachers and single classic where it’s possible to share interactive materials, homeworks communications and evaluations.

The panel will be part of the paralel session B.6.2 Curriculum of Digital Civic Education, Teaching of Civic Education and new Citizenship that will take place online from 17:45  to 20:00.

Click here, to read the agenda and register to the event .