CAPACITIE · Cutting-Edge Approaches for Pollution Assessment in Cities

Over half of the world’s population lives in cities and nearly two billion extra urban residents are expected in the next 20 years. Many of the fastest growing cities in the world are highly polluted, resulting in adverse effects on the health of humans and ecosystems. With increasing urbanisation across the world, there is an urgent need to better understand the factors and processes affecting pollution of cities and the potential negative impacts of pollution on human health and the environment and to develop improved approaches to mitigate against a range of pollutants. To achieve this, improved approaches for monitoring pollutants and for collecting, analysing and responding to the data and information that is generated are needed.Technologies such as mobile phones, passive sampling devices, miniaturised sensors, robots and state-of-the-art analytical techniques such as time of flight mass spectrometry could play an important role in understanding and responding to pollution in cities. The overall aim of the CAPACITIE project is therefore to produce a new generation of researchers that not only have the skills to develop and apply cutting-edge technologies to monitor pollutants in the natural environment but also have a detailed understanding of the needs of users of monitoring data and of the social and ethical issues around the adoption and use of selected technologies. These researchers will be highly employable in a range of sectors including: information technology, environmental protection, water and wastewater companies, chemical producers and analytical instrument manufacturers. To deliver this aim, a cohort of early stage researchers will work on a series of challenging research projects addressing different aspects of pollutant monitoring of city environments. The project has high level involvement from the private sector and involves input from partners around the globe. The project is therefore highly innovative, international and intersectoral.