CERC Report 2011–2012

The launch of the airTEXT App and updated website in

advance of the London Olympic and Paralympic

Games was a major highlight

Research Projects

SNAQ-Heathrow: Sensor Network for Air Quality at Heathrow Airport (www.snaq.org). Funded by NERC and led by Cambridge University Department of Chemistry, the study involves the pilot deployment of 50 high frequency sensors in and around Heathrow Airport and will enable signatures of individual aircraft or road vehicles to be captured. CERC‟s role in the analysis will be interpretation and evaluation of the data making use of ADMS-Airport.

TEAM_Play: CERC were partners in the EU FP7 research project TEAM_Play (Tool Suite for Environmental and Economic Aviation Modelling for Policy Analysis). TEAM_Play has set up an effective and efficiently working Tool Suite to provide powerful tools for policy assessment studies within ICAO-CAEP and on European, national and local levels. Climate Change: In 2010, CERC was commissioned by Norwegian state enterprise Gassnova to research the modelling of emissions to air from post-combustion amine-based Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). Work has included development of the ADMS model to incorporate chemistry and deposition schemes specifically for amines and their reaction products. CERC is currently working for Statoil to investigate the impacts of a range of proposed CCS schemes.

Offshore wind energy: CERC are lead partners in a study being undertaken for the Carbon Trust. The WRF mesoscale meteorological model is being used to examine the wakes of offshore windfarms - specifically whether the wake of one windfarm will significantly reduce the wind resource of a downstream windfarm.

PASODOBLE: The PASODOBLE project, funded by the EU FP7, focuses on regional- and local-scale air quality forecasting services in Europe. CERC have developed and applied a Model Evaluation Toolkit for evaluating the performance of air quality forecasting models www.myair .eu/products -serv ices / loca l -m ode l -eva luat ion /methodology-and-toolkit/.

CARBONES (CARBON fluxES): CERC created the website www.carbones.eu to display the global carbon stocks and CO2 fluxes produced by this EU project, including highly interactive maps and graphs. Independent scientific experts made very generous comments about the CARBONES website, such as “congratulations on the great user interface, a dream” and “the mapping works flawlessly and is very useful”.

Example output from the Myair Model Evaluation Toolkit

A carbon flux interactive map from the

CARBONES website

Calendar control allows user to choose the date and time to display. Buttons allow step forwards and backwards through the time steps.

Filters allow user to select the temporal filtering

Time period drop

-down allows

user to select

the time

Map controls allow user to pan and zoom the map

Additional tools to create animations, export pdf files and customise the plots

Legend gives the colour shading and units. User can click the legend to alter the colour shading

Regions tree control allows user to view specific regions of the world

Tree control allows user to select variable to display in the map

CERC provides a wide range of services related to emissions to air for urban and transport planning and for industrial emissions. CERC also carries out projects related to climate change and air quality forecasting. An area of increasing interest is the modelling of impacts of wind turbine wakes on dispersion. Recent projects have included: Air quality modelling and assessments for Local Air Quality Management (LAQM) and planning - studies for proposed CHP and biomass plants, resulting from new decentralised energy policy - air quality modelling assessments for proposed developments across the UK - LAQM studies on Updating and Screening Assessments and Detailed Assessments, including source apportionment and scenario testing - review of air quality monitoring networks Industrial emissions modelling - air quality assessments for planning and permitting applications for major industrial process impacts on human health and on conservation and wildlife sites, both in the UK and internationally - impacts of accidental releases using both ADMS and CERC‟s dense gas dispersion model GASTAR

City of London modelling impacts of emission reduction scenarios These included assessment of the impacts of: accelerated up take of electric and biofuel vehicles; introducing an inner London low emission zone; a restriction on taxi movements; and changes to the road layout.

NO2 (µg/m³)

< -5

-5 - -2

-2 - -1

-1 - -0.5

-0.5 - -0.1

-0.1 - 0.1

0.1 - 0.5

0.5 - 1

1 - 2

2 - 5

> 5

0 50 100 150 20025 MetresOS Open Data: Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database rights 2010.

NO2 (µg/m³)

< -5

-5 - -2

-2 - -1

-1 - -0.5

-0.5 - -0.1

-0.1 - 0.1

0.1 - 0.5

0.5 - 1

1 - 2

2 - 5

> 5

0 50 100 150 20025 MetresOS Open Data: Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database rights 2010.

Difference plots of annual average NO2 concentrations (µg/

m3) for two proposals for the removal of the Aldgate Gyratory

system, City of London

Air quality management Tbilisi, Georgia CERC is currently involved in a project supported by the Dutch Government targeting environmental improvements in Georgia. In a consortium comprising Witteveen+Bos and Envicontrol from the Netherlands and CENN from Georgia, a pilot project is being carried out on air quality in Tbilisi. CERC‟s role is to compile an emissions inventory and conduct air quality modelling, as well as to train local users of ADMS-Urban. Transport for London (TfL) technical support CERC continues to provide consultancy support to the Environmental Manager in the Surface Transport Department at London Bus Services. This work relates to the ongoing evaluation of the new-technology buses included in the TfL fleet, specifically the hybrid and hydrogen buses. The work involves routine data processing of daily fuel consumption and bus availability data from over 100 buses running on various routes in London, in addition to the associated Microsoft Excel VBA code developments. Impacts of radioactive releases CERC worked with Guy‟s and St Thomas‟ Hospital Foundation Trust and the University of Surrey to carry out an assessment of radioactive emissions and γ-dose from the Positron Emission Tomography (PET) cyclotron and PET radiopharmacy facility at St Thomas‟ Hospital. The study included dispersion modelling for a range of scenarios, such as changes to the stack and hospital buildings, and included comparison with wind tunnel data.

Maximum 8-hour average fluorine-18 concentration (Bq/m³)

from St Thomas’ Hospital for current situation

ADMS-Urban is being used

to model pollutant

concentrations in Tbilisi.

Consultancy

Software

CERC also produces specialised software and customised versions of models in response to particular customer requests or the needs of users in particular countries. Recent examples include incorporating the odour module into ADMS-Urban, the development of a wind turbine module for ADMS 5 and developing a dense gas puff model for urban planners.

ADMS 5, the latest version of CERC‟s flagship industrial air pollution model, was released in November 2012. New features include allowance for the impact of wind turbines on

airflow and dispersion, a link to AERMOD and inclusion of a contour facility in the ADMS-Mapper.

Now available to ADMS users, Run Manager centralises

the scheduling of model runs, allowing greater licensing

flexibility within an organisation.

The latest upgrade of ADMS-Urban, ADMS-Roads & ADMS-Airport included the 2012 emission factors from the DfT (Department for Transport). The corresponding EMIT 3.1 release included brake & tyre wear, traffic idling factors and updates to the non-road emission data sets.

ADMS-STAR is a new puff model for explosive and continuous releases including radioactive releases. The model includes spatially- and temporally-varying meteorology and the effects of complex terrain.

Cambridge Environmental Research Consultants Ltd 3 King‟s Parade, Cambridge, CB2 1SJ, UK

Tel: +44 (0)1223 357773 Fax: +44 (0)1223 357492 Email: enquiries@cerc.co.uk www.cerc.co.uk

Model Version Release date

ADMS-STAR 1.0 December 2012

ADMS 5 5.0 November 2012

ADMS-Urban with EfT update 3.1.4 November 2012

ADMS-Roads with EfT update 3.1.4 November 2012

ADMS-Airport with EfT update 3.1.4 November 2012

Run Manager 1.1 October 2012

EMIT 3.1 June 2012

ADMS-Airport 3.1.2 May 2012

ADMS-Roads 3.1.2 December 2011

ADMS-Urban 3.1.2 November 2011

FLOWSTAR 7.1.4 July 2011

The London airTEXT forecasting system operated by CERC was enhanced for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Forecasts of air pollution, UV, pollen and temperature are now provided on the web (www.airtext.info), smartphone apps, Facebook, Twitter, SMS, voicemail and by email. The developments to airTEXT in 2012 were supported by the Mayor of London, TfL, Defra, LOCOG, the HPA and the EU through the PASODOBLE project. CERC‟s forecasting system was also adopted by Barcelona and Beijing in 2012. CERC have also developed and trialled a new airTEXT „Daily health bulletin‟ service, providing daily forecasts of air pollution, pollen, UV and temperature to public services in Islington and subsequently rolled out across London in preparation for the Olympics, thanks to funding from Defra.

Our partners including NUMTECH (France), Reseaux (Italy), ELLE (Baltic States), Flowmotion (Netherlands), Envirocon (Ireland) and CERC China continue to distribute our software. A notable event was the installation of ADMS-Urban for Météorologie Nationale, Casablanca by NUMTECH.

Pollution contours

using ADMS-Mapper

Daily health bulletin issued for London boroughs

Casablanca: Concentrations of NOx calculated by ADMS-Urban Recent releases of CERC software