"UK" Green Infrastructure for roadside air quality mitigation: unblocking a UK policy impasse

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This Innovation project for impact will bring together policy and practice leaders concerned with how planning decisions affect urban air quality. The overarching aim is to make a software platform for the quantitative assessment of Green Infrastructure as an aid to the improvement of roadside air quality. We call this platform GI4RAQ. Our particular objectives can be summarised as: 1. to provide a consolidated, open-source, computer modelling code for roadside air pollution in urban settings based on our existing research code.2. to co-design of a fit-for-purpose, simple, and attractive GI4RAQ platform for urban practitioners as a front-end to the consolidated model code.3. to demonstrate that the GI4RAQ platform can unlock a critical impasse in current planning policy and so enable capacity-building on the regulatory and consultancy sides of the planning process. We will work with major influencers in the private and public sectors, which offers a rapid and cost-effective route to meaningful impact. Specifically, we will work with Transport for London and the Greater London Authority to influence the next issue of the London Plan. To be released towards the end of 2019, a proposed new policy requiring larger-scale developments to be 'Air Quality Positive' may be implemented, but only if tools exist to evidence such a result at planning. We will work with the UK's leading air quality consultants, Cambridge Environmental Research Consultants (CERC) and Ricardo Energy & Environment, to ensure that the GI4RAQ platform is fit for operational use and that it can be used alongside current Air Quality tools. London's 33 Local Authorities must ensure their Local Plans conform to the London Plan, and Authorities across the UK look to the London Plan in preparing their own Local Plans, both of which provide cascading impact for our proposed work. The project is designed to dovetail with 'WM Air', a large multi-partner programme focused on West Midlands' air quality led by the University of Birmingham. The GI4RAQ Principal Investigator leads the work stream on green infrastructure in WM Air alongside GI4RAQ partner Birmingham City Council, thereby ensuring rapid knowledge transfer between research and practice in London and Birmingham.The project will establish a robust approach to 'GI4RAQ' interventions to deliver reliable improvements in roadside air quality, based on quantitative computer modelling but avoiding the time and expense of full fluid flow simulations. The approach develops directly out of a NERC Innovation Pathfinder, which established that a strong demand for quantitative GI4RAQ exists, but also identified the policy impasse, and a placement of the researcher co-Investigator in Transport for London.