CARES field measurement campaigns to resume

The CARES project has been particularly hurt by the COVID-19 pandemic, since many of its core activities are built around the gathering of people and instruments from the partner countries for field experiments at different locations. Lockdowns and travel restrictions have effectively hindered that for the last 15 months. But, as vaccine programs are now in place, infection rates are slowing down, and Europe is slowly opening up again, the preparations for the field campaigns are now being resumed.

Thus, in the last week of June the controlled characterization experiments at the RDW test track in Lelystad, the Netherlands, will take place after a one-year delay. About ten partner organizations will bring their RES instruments to the test track and carry out a unique measurement experiment involving two light-duty vehicles, one heavy-duty truck and two motorcycles. All vehicles are equipped with onboard emission measurement instruments, some of which the emission control systems can be tampered with.

Next after the test track experiments, the first city demonstration measurements will take place in Milan, Italy, from mid-September until mid-October. These experiments will be carried out at the same time new environmental regulations for on-road traffic will be introduced in Milan on October 1st, which will ban all vehicles from the urban centre that do not comply with the Euro 6 standard. This challenging test for the RES instruments will be complemented by an air quality monitoring experiment to capture the local benefits to detect high polluting vehicles and enforcing compliance with exhaust pollutant standards in a city environment.