CARES remote emission sensing campaign in Milan completed

The city of Milan heavily suffers from air pollution caused by several sources, the most important of which are combustion-based vehicles. CARES partners recently completed a remote sensing campaign at three locations within the city of Milan to monitor the performance of innovative systems helping to strengthen the city’s low emission zone, which bans most polluting vehicles. Running from September 23 to October 18, the campaign used remote sensing technology installed at the restricted traffic zones to collect real-world vehicular emissions data and evaluate the direct impact on local air quality.

Within the scope of the measurement campaign, researchers tested newly developed remote sensing technology. Specifically, CARES partners evaluated, for the first time in real urban conditions, the precision and the accuracy of these sensors collocated along with a commercial system and an air quality monitoring station. The remote sensing systems are going to be validated by using emissions data obtained by testing vehicles equipped with Portable Emissions Measurement Systems (PEMS).

The campaign was run in partnership with the Municipality of Milan and its Mobility, Environment and Territory Agency (AMAT). It was carried out with the contribution from Hager Environmental & Atmospheric Technologies (H.E.A.T.), Graz University of Technology, University of York, and Airyx. Innovhub-SSI managed the campaign with onboard emission measurements with the contribution also from the European Commission DG JRC (Joint Research Center). A detailed analysis of the measurements will be released in the upcoming months.