CERIDES – Excellence in Innovation and Technology takes part in the partners meeting of AQ Serve (funded by ΙδΕΚ)

February 11, 2021
Pericles Leng Cheng

Cyprus is centrally located in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East (EMME), a region with a population of about 400 million, affected by dust storms, dryness, heat extremes and unparalleled air pollution. The EMME has been identified as one of the few climate change “hot spots”, with adverse impacts by extreme weather events and poor air quality, which are expected to exacerbate in the coming decades. Air pollution, especially particulate matter (PM), plays a crucial role in regional climate (temperature, precipitation) and has major adverse health effects. Estimates of the health impacts attributable to exposure to air pollution indicate that fine PM concentrations (PM2.5) are responsible for about 432,000 premature deaths due to long-term exposure in Europe.

AQ-SERVE will combine innovative technical developments with new scientific knowledge on the characterization and prediction of air quality in order to provide the first-ever evaluation of the health impact and risk assessment of air pollution in Cyprus. Different scenarios (abatement measures) will be tested in a coupled Air Quality/Health & Risk model with the objective to define efficient mitigation measures which can be translated to the public authorities (National Air Quality Action Plan).

CERIDES – Excellence in Innovation and Technology is in charge of developing a Health Impact Assessment (HIA) and a Health Risk Assessment (HRA).

HRA: definition of those at risk; obtaining source PM2.5 data from previous WP’s; estimation of the affected population; estimation of exposure thresholds; quantification of risk and generalisation of risk against basic policy questions.

HIA: how different emission sources (e.g. traffic, industry, biomass burning, desert dust, and agriculture) contribute to PM2.5 concentrations levels and the link with premature mortality.

CERIDES – Excellence in Innovation and Technology took part in the partners meeting.