CArE-Cities: Clean air engineering for cities

Air pollution causes seven million premature deaths worldwide, disproportionately affecting poor and vulnerable communities and exacerbating inequalities among the masses in official development assistance (ODA) countries. This complex problem requires a holistic understanding of the whole process from pollution to solution by building interdisciplinary interfaces.

CArE-Cities is a seed funding project, awarded by the University of Surrey under the Research England’s Global Challenge Research Funds. CArE-Cities involves 11 Development Assistance Committee (DAC) listed countries and aspires to bring cleaner air to cities by building a knowledge exchange platform. Its activities include joint workshops, researchers exchange and pilot studies to address urban development and health impact assessment agendas in ODA countries.

With a collaborative vision of ‘clean air for all’, CArE-Cities aims to establish a multidisciplinary team for understanding emissions, penetrating low-cost pollution monitoring technology and exposure reduction strategies in selected ODA cities to develop a scientific framework for managing air pollution impacts on the health of people in these cities.

CArE-Cities will assess the commuters’ exposure through collecting primary concentration data and evaluating different control scenarios to propose optimal transport emission control programs to reduce the impact on human health in Cairo and Sao Paulo; and assessing the feasibility of similar studies in countries such as Malawi, Tanzania, Iraq, Bangladesh and Ethiopia.

Consolidating on the findings of the project, the team aims to develop larger research grant proposals with involved partners in future.