WP3 - Support to decision making toward healthier cities

WP3.A Interdisciplinary and multidimensional assessment of pollution mitigation measures

The aim of this task is to build an interdisciplinary modelling chain at the urban area scale, to assess actions leading to lower pollutants emissions. First, measures actually implemented by the Grenoble urban area will be evaluated based on the combination of the modelling chain, field measurement, and population surveys related to population perception, mobility, wood heating and quality of life. Such measurements at different years can be confounded by differences in meteorological conditions between the compared years, an issue that can be limited by first modelling the influence of meteorology, season and year on PM levels over the whole period through a regression model, and adjusting for this influence.

Then more theoretical and contrasted scenarios of measures will be assessed. They will include already planned measures (wood heater replacement incentive), hypothesized (e.g., ban of Euro 1-2-3 vehicles in the city centre) or possible measures (taken e.g. from examples implemented in other cities).

Dimensions of the evaluation are the following:

Traffic and mobility

•  Air quality assessment will include the approach developed in WP 1 concerning fine-scale spatial variations (10m grid) in PM and population density.
•  Health impacts (non-accidental mortality, lung cancer incidence and low birth weight incidence). As done in our previous study, results will be stratified on the European Deprivation Index, a measure of socioeconomic deprivation, available at the IRIS scale, the finest spatial scale for France. MobilAir will also include health benefits from the development of active mobility (bicycle and walk) induced by transport policies.
•  Cost-benefit analysis will include (i) the direct costs of implementation of measures, (ii) the indirect economic costs/gains induced by the measures on each category of agent: local authorities, households, economic activities, (iii) external costs, corresponding to the economic assessment of health impact (iv) Other external costs (time spent for mobility, road safety, noise, greenhouse gases emissions, health benefits of the development of active modes).

WP3.B. Identification of measures for reaching given air quality and public health targets

The starting point will be the formulation of targeted benefits relevant to public health (a 20% decrease in PM-related mortality for example). These objectives will be translated into an average change in atmospheric pollution (PM) concentration, using a reverse health impact assessment approach (implemented through iterative forward health impact assessment studies assuming various decreases in PM levels). We will then identify urban measures allowing to reach such a target PM concentration distribution in the urban area using inverse modelling techniques ; these measures will be chosen among options concerning both traffic and wood heating, based on an available inventory of highly-polluting wood-burning heaters in the area. The impact of these measures will be evaluated as in WP3.A above as a check.