Air Quality
Everything comes down to nature
The main source of air pollution in Braga is the vehicles traffic, which varies between areas with heavily traffic and others that are relatively quiet. Therefore, the Municipality of Braga has implemented a set of initiatives to reduce car circulation and the use of individual transport, such as the creation of pedestrian and cycling areas, the promotion of public transport and mobility alternative (such as scooters and shared bicycles) and projects to encourage sustainable transport for students to schools. An air quality monitoring network with high spatial density is also being implemented, which will provide real-time data to monitor and encourage people to change their behaviours.
Good Practices
Description and Objectives
Braga City Council is implementing an air quality and noise monitoring network with high spatial density. The implementation of the network has several objectives, namely in terms of a Smart City components: Smart Governance; Smart Environment and Smart Living. Smart Environment will be achieved by increasing temporal and spatial representativeness of environmental data using communication technologies and equipment that, due to their dimension and price, will be placed in several locations. Smart Living is also addressed by the dissemination of real-time data helping people changing their behaviour in daily life and contributing to improve their health. The environmental monitoring network equipment’s has real-time communication systems and web-based platform that connects people to real-time equipment data. The base data collected by network will allow the calculation of environmental indexes based on real-time data that summarize reality, supporting decision makers and therefore support a Smart Governance.
Current and/or potential future impact
Environmental
- Environmental education.
- Availability of spatial high density environmental data.
Social
- Dissemination of real-time data helps people changing their behaviour in daily life and contributes to improve their health.
Economic
- Availability of reliable and representative data may save costs in complex systems and inefficient measures
- Cost saving with health issues
Contributes to the sustainability transitions
- Green transition
- Energy transition
- Climate transition
- Digital transition
- Social transition
Innovative nature and potential for replication in other cities
Ubiquitous environmental monitoring starts being a reality in several major cities since the technology become available and affordable. However, for some parameters like air quality pollutants (O3, NO2, PM10 and PM2,5) the technology is not available in a ready-to-use way, needing to be tested and calibrated before use. Also, some steps are needed to be done before this ubiquitous environmental monitoring starts being an effective decision tool. Nevertheless, Braga’s monitoring network, with high spatial density, has a large potential for replication in other cities.
Engagement with stakeholders and communication strategies
The collected data will be available, not only for the general public, but also for teachers, researchers and environmental groups. The use of schools as the location of the air quality and noise stations is considered as a strategy to promote awareness campaigns and mechanisms for students’ involvement.
