ClairCity newsletter ClairCity newsletter January 2019 | Page 6

Location and economy
Bristol is a city of 450,000 people in
the south west of the UK, around
170km from London. Famous for its
bridge, hot air balloons and the
graffiti artist Banksy, Bristol likes to
be acknowledged as a cultural and
artistic hub, as well as the economic
driver for the region.
Its historic role was as one of the
key ports for British Empire trading,
especially in the markets of tobacco
and slaves. Nowadays the port is
located 10km west, and the
aerospace and defence industries to
the north of the city have taken
prominence and employ tens of
thousands of people.
Air quality situation
The primary air quality concern for
Bristol is nitrogen dioxide levels
Welcome to Bristol
In each edition we introduce one of our six pilot
areas. Bristol, in the south west of the UK, is a
proud member of ClairCity.
related to transport. The regional
reliance on cars and historic lack of
investment in public transport has
meant that NOx levels are
breaching EU limits across most of
the main roads around the centre.
Housing stock tends to be houses
rather than flats, with areas of
smaller terraced housing mixed with
larger semi-detatched houses.
Domestic heating is predominantly
gas, with consequently low PM
levels. However, there is a fashion
for an increasing number of
wealthier households to install wood
burning stoves or use chimneys for
open fires. These are used in
addition to gas central heating, and
have the potential to generate
localised PM concerns.
Sister project successes
Alongside ClairCity, two other
projects are funded under the
same EU Horizon 2020 call to
improve the air quality and reduce
the carbon footprint of European
cities. They are known as iSCAPE
(Improving the Smart Control of
Air Pollution in Europe) and
ICARUS (Integrated Climate
forcing and Air pollution Reduction
in Urban Systems).
Each project
has a slightly
different focus.
iSCAPE is
exploring
sustainable and
passive air
pollution
remediation
strategies,
policy interventions and
behavioural change initiatives.
ICARUS focuses on developing
integrated tools and strategies for
urban impact assessment, with
high dimensional data fusion and
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refined tools for environmental and
health impact assessment.
Our three projects have
collaborated for European Green
Week, and cooperate in the
dissemination of our results and
conclusions. To find out more,
follow @iSCAPEproject and
@ICARUSEU2020 on Twitter, or
visit www.icarus2020.eu
www.iscapeproject.eu