Affordable Air Quality Monitoring for Improved Air Quality Management in West Africa

恶劣的空气质量损害了数百万人的生命和生计，世界卫生组织（WHO）预测，到2030年，空气质量将成为世界上可预防死亡的最大原因。生活在中低收入国家和城市的人受到的影响尤其严重，既有短期的急性影响，也有生活质量和健康的终身累积下降。有一个重大的机会，共同设计和共同生产一个高度容错的系统，用于空气污染测量，这是完全开源的，并从容易获得的低成本和现成的组件。其目标是，这种方法将是可扩展的，并可由国内从业人员以适度的成本在低收入国家长期维持。然后，新的测量结果可以与国内机构在我们的支持下开发的综合评估模型相结合，以提高其缓解空气污染的决策能力。这一模式将使用该大学项目伙伴开发的工具。这种监测和建模的新创新可以催化行动并支持长期有益的变化，最初是在我们的早期采用伙伴国家，然后应用于其他中低收入国家。约克大学沃尔夫森大气化学实验室（WACL）最近的研究开发了一种低功耗，基于多个低成本空气污染传感器的集群的高度容错技术，以提供目标空气污染物的高质量测量。这种方法利用了最先进的传感器和电子设备的简单性、适度的成本和高可靠性，但显著提高了收集的数据质量。传感器技术的实际使用由于与较差的单个传感器数据质量相关的问题而放缓。约克开发了一种技术，该技术使用多个相同类型的传感器来解决在LMIC中应用的两个关键的突出障碍，即传感器到传感器的可变性和意外的传感器故障。我们的目标是建立一个自我支持的用户社区，可以构建和修复自己的仪器，并帮助改进我们的初始设计。这一办法与多年来未能在中低收入国家发挥作用的自上而下的商业服务模式的普遍模式有着根本的不同，约克大学环境和地理系的斯德哥尔摩环境研究所中心一直在与多哥和科特迪瓦的环境部、加纳环境保护局和洛美大学合作，多哥和科特迪瓦的费利克斯·乌弗埃-博瓦尼大学利用LEAP-IBC（由SEI开发）开发国家模型，以支持国家低排放规划。我们将在这项工作的基础上，将LEAP-IBC应用于洛美、阿比让、阿克拉和加纳的另一个城市（例如库马西），因为这些城市没有此类工具，而且定期监测有限或根本没有。这将使他们能够制定主要空气污染物的排放清单，基线和缓解排放预测，并估计PM2.5的浓度和相关的人类健康影响。我们将与当地学者和规划师合作，支持分析的发展，指导他们进行数据收集，模型设计，模型验证和结果提取。我们将与科罗拉多大学和WACL合作，进一步开发LEAP-IBC的GEOS-Chem伴随模型输入，将LEAP-IBC中的排放量转换为这些城市的PM2.5和臭氧浓度。科特迪瓦和多哥还将了解监测和建模如何能够互惠互利，以提供必要的证据，进一步制定、实施和监测这些城市的空气质量计划，以及实现城市环境空气质量标准的机会。

Poor air quality damages the lives and livelihoods of millions of people and is predicted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to become the world's largest cause of preventable death by 2030. Those living in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) and cities are particularly affected, both through short-term acute effects and an accumulated life-long reduction in quality of life and health. There is a major opportunity to co-design and co-produce a highly fault-tolerant system for air pollution measurement, that is fully open-source, and built from easily available low cost and off-the-shelf components. The ambition is that this approach would be scale-able and could be sustained in LMICs by in-country practitioners at modest cost, long-term. New measurements can then be coupled to integrated assessment models developed by in-country agencies with our support to enhance their decision-making capacity on air pollution mitigation. This modelling will use a tool developed by project partners in the University. This new innovation for monitoring and modelling, can catalyse action and support long-term beneficial change, initially in our early adopter partner countries, and then applied to other LMICs.Recent research from the University of York's Wolfson Atmospheric Chemistry Laboratories (WACL) has developed a low power, highly fault tolerant technology based on the clustering of multiple low-cost air pollution sensors to provide high quality measurements of target air pollutants. This approach exploits the simplicity, modest cost and high reliability of state-of-the-art sensors and electronics, but significantly improves the quality of data collected. The real-world use of sensor technologies has been slowed due to issues relating to poor individual sensor data quality. York have developed a technology that uses multiple sensors of the same type to solve the two key outstanding barriers to application in LMICs, that of sensor-to-sensor variability and unexpected sensor failure. The aim is to enable a self-supporting user community that can build and fix its own instruments and help improve on our initial designs. This approach differs fundamentally from the prevailing paradigm of a top-down commercial services model which has for many years failed to function in LMICs.The Stockholm Environment Institute centre (SEI) in the Department of Environment and Geography at the University of York has been working with the Ministries of Environment in Togo and Cote d'Ivoire and the Ghana Environment Protection Agency, and the University of Lomé, Togo and Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny in Cote D'Ivoire to develop national models using LEAP-IBC (developed by SEI), to support national low-emission planning. We will build on this work applying LEAP-IBC to Lomé, Abidjan, Accra, and another Ghanaian city (e.g. Kumasi) where no such tool is available, and there is limited or no regular monitoring. This will allow them to develop emission inventories of key air pollutants, baseline and mitigation emission projections, and to estimate the resulting concentrations of PM2.5 and the associated human health impacts. We will work with local academics and planners to support the development of the analysis, guiding them through the data collection, model design, model validation and extraction of results. Working with the University of Colorado and WACL, we will further develop the GEOS-Chem Adjoint model inputs to LEAP-IBC that converts emissions in LEAP-IBC to concentrations of PM2.5 and ozone in these cities.The inclusion of this modelling, developed by planners in Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire and Togo will also allow for an understanding of how the monitoring and modelling can be mutually beneficial to provide the evidence needed for the further development, implementation and monitoring of air quality plans in these cities and opportunities to achieve ambient air quality standards in cities.