Projects & Collaborations 8 foundShow per page10 10 20 50 Feedbacks between vegetation, carbon, energy, and water cycles in the urban environment (UrbaNature) Research Project | 3 Project MembersNo Description available PAUL: Pilot Application in Urban Landscapes towards integrated city observatories for greenhouse gases Research Project | 4 Project MembersThe "Pilot Application in Urban Landscapes: towards integrated city observatories for greenhouse gases" (PAUL) project supports the European Green Deal by creating capabilities to observe and verify greenhouse gas emissions from densely populated urban areas across Europe. Cities are recognized as important anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission hotspots and therefore play a significant role in any emission reduction efforts. The PAUL project aims to increase our understanding of specific needs of greenhouse gas emission assessment in urban environment; it compares available and novel observational approaches and implements an integrated concept for a city observatory, providing unique data sets that feed diverse modelling approaches, scientific studies and will be the base of services towards the city administrations. A specifically innovative approach is the co-design of services, models and observations between city administrators and scientists from multiple disciplines including social and governmental sciences.The PAUL co-design approach will exploring the needs of the cities and combining these with the scientific outcomes. This allows to introduce smart services to the cities, supporting evidence-based decisions on climate action and strategic investments. Overarching goals of PAUL are to: 1) implement elements of a pilot city observatory in a large (Paris), a medium (Munich) and a small (Zurich) European city, 2) collaborate with city stakeholders and engage citizens in co-designing services that are required for GHG monitoring in order to validate the implementation of Paris Agreement, and 3) increase our understanding of specific needs of GHG assessment in urban environment and create a service portfolio for setting up an urban greenhouse gas observatory. ICOS-CH: Integrated Carbon Observation System in Switzerland, Phase 3 Research Project | 4 Project MembersICOS-CH is the Swiss contribution to the I ntegrated C arbon O bservation S ystem R esearch I nfrastruc-ture ( ICOS RI ) which entered its operational phase in 2015. Overarching goals of ICOS RI are to quantify and to understand the greenhouse gas (GHG) budget of the European continent and adjacent regions based on highly standardized measurements in the atmosphere, in terrestrial ecosystems and in the ocean, and to distribute data and data products to stakeholders and user communities. With the ICOS-CH network, i.e. ETH Zurich (National Focal Point), Empa, WSL, University of Bern, University of Basel, and MeteoSwiss, Switzerland participates in ICOS RI since its beginning in 2013. ICOS-CH commits to maintain DAV and JFJ at Class 1 level and to extend the existing network with an urban site, in response to the scientific demand for reliable measurements of the most dynamic land cover globally, and in accordance with the ICOS RI Strategy. The Swiss contribution to ICOS RI will be coordinated within Subproject A, also responsible for communication within and beyond ICOS-CH. Site infrastructure needs to be completed (in Subprojects B and C for DAV and JFJ, respectively) and upgraded (in Subproject D for Basel (BKLI)). DAV and JFJ will be maintained at Class 1 level, and BKLI developed as Associated Site, i.e., with comprehensive variable sets, regular measurement campaigns, stringent quality requirements, fast response times should sensors need repair, and near real-time data provision to ICOS RI. This requires continuous data quality assurance and quality control by well-trained technical staff and data scientists. Overall, ICOS-CH provides a unique opportunity for scientists to contribute to outstanding research and scientific innovations based on continuous, high-precision and open-access data, a comprehensive set of measurements, and an excellent infrastructure that provides on-site validations for research related to Earth system science. EMER-met@Basel (Emergency Response Meteorology) Research Project | 2 Project MembersThe aim of this project is to evaluate the potential of a new EMER-Met station with focus on the Basel area. This station will be especially useful in case of an industrial accident around Basel. In this project, MeteoSwiss will install a complete set of remote sensing instruments near Basel for one year. A radar wind profiler, a wind lidar, and a microwave radiometer will be installed. The wind profiler and the lidar are complementary and allow a precise measurement of the wind from a height of 25 m to 8000 m above ground level. The wind lidar can additionally be used to detect smoke plumes in a radius of 8 km. A microwave radiometer will measure temperature and humidity profiles up to 1.5 km. Examples of observations are shown below. Even if measurements are already available on the Swiss plateau, measurements at Basel will likely improve the simulation of the specific weather situations at the Rhine bend. During this campaign, data from these additional instruments will be used in real-time to improve weather forecasts around Basel. Off-line calculations will be performed to determine the impact of the instruments on weather forecasts in typical weather situations. These simulations are called Observing System Experiments (OSEs) and are commonly used to evaluate the benefit of a specific observation. A scientific collaborator, funded by this project, will work during one year on these experiments and on the report. The collaborator will work in close collaboration with MeteoSwiss teams in Zurich and Payerne. After the project, the benefit of a remote sensing measurement station at Basel to forecast the dispersion of chemicals will be quantified. A strong influence is expected in case of wind shear situations (different wind directions near the ground and further up in the atmosphere) or temperature inversions. Health-relevant components in atmospheric aerosol Research Project | 4 Project MembersExposure to atmospheric particles has been shown to be related to significant negative health effects and the World Health Organisation identified air pollution particles as the worldwide most severe and urgent public health issue, linked to over three million premature deaths per year worldwide. Despite the decade-long evidence (based on epidemiological and laboratory studies) that link inhalation of ambient aerosol particles with diseases such as respiratory and cardiovascular diseases and lung cancer, it is unclear which particle properties and components are responsible for their toxic effects. It has been proposed that a wide range of oxidising particle components such as peroxides and radicals (so-called ROS, reactive oxygen species), which are present in the particles or which are generated when particles get deposited on the surface of the lung, might be key in explaining atmospheric particle toxicity. However, firm data about oxidising properties of atmospheric aerosol particle is scarce due the unavailability of suitable analytical methods and instruments suitable for field measurements. In addition to the lack of a fundamental understanding of ROS sources in the atmosphere, we recently showed that a up to half or more of the total ROS is short-lived (due to their highly reactive nature) with a lifetime of only a few minutes and therefore conventional filter-based offline analysis methods to quantify ROS are likely underestimating strongly true ROS concentrations. A better understanding of the fundamental particle properties that cause negative health effects and improved measurement capabilities would allow to identify the most toxic particle sources and would ultimately provide the basis for future more effective and efficient air pollution reduction policies. Recognising the potential key importance of ROS in explaining atmospheric particle toxicity but also the significant shortcomings of current methods quantifying and characterising ROS, we therefore aim:(1)to quantify the true total levels of ROS concentrations in ambient atmospheric aerosol in extended field campaigns using our novel online ROS instrument,(2)to identify sources of ROS in aerosol particles and assess the toxicity of these particle sources using lung cell cultures by performing a range of laboratory experiments, (3)to develop a fundamental molecular-level understanding of components contributing to the total particle-bound ROS concentrations, especially organic peroxides, and to develop new methods to characterise and quantify peroxides in laboratory and field experiments.The project proposed here is a strongly interlinked lab and field project, which will significantly advance our knowledge about reactive oxygen species in atmospheric particles, their formation processes, sources and toxicity. This will be essential for a comprehensive understanding of air pollution particle toxicity and to devise improved and efficient air pollution mitigation policies. CURE: Copernicus for Urban Resilience in Europe Research Project | 3 Project MembersA major challenge for the urban community is the exploitation of the Copernicus products in dealing with the multidimensional nature of urban sustainability towards enhancing urban resilience. Combined information from Copernicus Core Services, namely the Land Monitoring Service (CLMS), the Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), the Climate Change Service (C3S) and the Emergency Management Service (EMS), can provide valuable information to address the multidimensionality of urban resilience. Moreover, the urban planning community needs spatially disaggregated environmental information, at local and city scales. Such information, for all urban environmental parameters, is not directly available from the above Copernicus Core Services, while several data and products from contemporary satellite missions consist valuable tools for retrieving urban environmental parameters at local scale. Therefore, cross-cutting applications among the above Copernicus Core Services may address urban resilience, if they also cope with the required scale with the exploitation of third-party data, in-situ observations and modelling, as appropriate. The main goal of the proposed project CURE (Copernicus for Urban Resilience in Europe) is to synergistically exploit the above Core Services to develop an umbrella cross-cutting application for urban resilience, consisting of individual cross-cutting applications for climate change adaptation/mitigation, energy and economy, as well as healthy cities and social environments, at several European cities. CURE will use DIAS (Data and Information Access Services) to develop a system for integrating these applications, capable of supporting operational applications and downstream services across Europe in the future. CURE will develop synergies with EuroGEOSS and Climate-KIC and provide scenarios on how the developed system could potentially be integrated into the existing Copernicus service architecture, addressing also its economic feasibility. diFUME Research Project | 4 Project MembersMonitoring CO2 emissions of urban areas has become a necessity for sustainable urban planning and climate change mitigation. The current urban inventories are based on top-down approaches that use fuel and electricity consumption statistics for determining CO2 emissions. Such approaches present consistency issues, neglect the biogenic components of the urban carbon cycle (i.e. vegetation, soil) and have restricted spatial and temporal resolution. The main goal of diFUME is to provide a robust methodology for mapping and monitoring the actual urban CO2 flux at optimum spatial and temporal scales, meaningful for urban design decisions. diFUME will develop, apply and evaluate independent models, capable to estimate all the different components of the urban carbon cycle (i.e. building emissions, traffic emissions, human metabolism, photosynthetic uptake, plant respiration, soil respiration). An innovative interdisciplinary methodology will be introduced, combining two cutting-edge technology tools, the Eddy Covariance (EC) and the latest advances in Earth Observation (EO). EC provides continuous in-situ measurements of CO2 flux at the local scale. Previous EC applications in urban areas have provided valuable insights on the holistic understanding of the urban CO2 flux according to the source/sink distribution in the highly heterogeneous urban environment. EO offers synoptic and continuous monitoring of large areas, capable of enhanced representation of the urban cover, morphology and function. Combined use of EO and EC can provide enhanced interpretation and modelling capabilities to achieve fine scale mapping and monitoring of urban CO2 flux. diFUME methodology will be developed and applied in the case study of Basel, exploiting the unique infrastructure and long-term urban EC measurements. diFUME methodology can be transferable to any city, providing an independent toolbox for consistent urban CO2 emission monitoring, supporting sustainable urban planning strategies. Molecular level characterisation of aerosol composition and toxicity Research Project | 3 Project MembersOrganic material is the most abundant component in atmospheric particles. The composition and potential toxicity of the organic material is only poorly understood, partly due to the high complexity of the organic compounds present in aerosol particles. This project develops novel high pressure liquid chromatography ultra-high resolution mass spectrometry methods to identify and quantify organic aerosol components that are characteristic for specific sources and which are potentially causing their toxicity, with a focus on peroxides and organic radicals. 1 1
Feedbacks between vegetation, carbon, energy, and water cycles in the urban environment (UrbaNature) Research Project | 3 Project MembersNo Description available
PAUL: Pilot Application in Urban Landscapes towards integrated city observatories for greenhouse gases Research Project | 4 Project MembersThe "Pilot Application in Urban Landscapes: towards integrated city observatories for greenhouse gases" (PAUL) project supports the European Green Deal by creating capabilities to observe and verify greenhouse gas emissions from densely populated urban areas across Europe. Cities are recognized as important anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission hotspots and therefore play a significant role in any emission reduction efforts. The PAUL project aims to increase our understanding of specific needs of greenhouse gas emission assessment in urban environment; it compares available and novel observational approaches and implements an integrated concept for a city observatory, providing unique data sets that feed diverse modelling approaches, scientific studies and will be the base of services towards the city administrations. A specifically innovative approach is the co-design of services, models and observations between city administrators and scientists from multiple disciplines including social and governmental sciences.The PAUL co-design approach will exploring the needs of the cities and combining these with the scientific outcomes. This allows to introduce smart services to the cities, supporting evidence-based decisions on climate action and strategic investments. Overarching goals of PAUL are to: 1) implement elements of a pilot city observatory in a large (Paris), a medium (Munich) and a small (Zurich) European city, 2) collaborate with city stakeholders and engage citizens in co-designing services that are required for GHG monitoring in order to validate the implementation of Paris Agreement, and 3) increase our understanding of specific needs of GHG assessment in urban environment and create a service portfolio for setting up an urban greenhouse gas observatory.
ICOS-CH: Integrated Carbon Observation System in Switzerland, Phase 3 Research Project | 4 Project MembersICOS-CH is the Swiss contribution to the I ntegrated C arbon O bservation S ystem R esearch I nfrastruc-ture ( ICOS RI ) which entered its operational phase in 2015. Overarching goals of ICOS RI are to quantify and to understand the greenhouse gas (GHG) budget of the European continent and adjacent regions based on highly standardized measurements in the atmosphere, in terrestrial ecosystems and in the ocean, and to distribute data and data products to stakeholders and user communities. With the ICOS-CH network, i.e. ETH Zurich (National Focal Point), Empa, WSL, University of Bern, University of Basel, and MeteoSwiss, Switzerland participates in ICOS RI since its beginning in 2013. ICOS-CH commits to maintain DAV and JFJ at Class 1 level and to extend the existing network with an urban site, in response to the scientific demand for reliable measurements of the most dynamic land cover globally, and in accordance with the ICOS RI Strategy. The Swiss contribution to ICOS RI will be coordinated within Subproject A, also responsible for communication within and beyond ICOS-CH. Site infrastructure needs to be completed (in Subprojects B and C for DAV and JFJ, respectively) and upgraded (in Subproject D for Basel (BKLI)). DAV and JFJ will be maintained at Class 1 level, and BKLI developed as Associated Site, i.e., with comprehensive variable sets, regular measurement campaigns, stringent quality requirements, fast response times should sensors need repair, and near real-time data provision to ICOS RI. This requires continuous data quality assurance and quality control by well-trained technical staff and data scientists. Overall, ICOS-CH provides a unique opportunity for scientists to contribute to outstanding research and scientific innovations based on continuous, high-precision and open-access data, a comprehensive set of measurements, and an excellent infrastructure that provides on-site validations for research related to Earth system science.
EMER-met@Basel (Emergency Response Meteorology) Research Project | 2 Project MembersThe aim of this project is to evaluate the potential of a new EMER-Met station with focus on the Basel area. This station will be especially useful in case of an industrial accident around Basel. In this project, MeteoSwiss will install a complete set of remote sensing instruments near Basel for one year. A radar wind profiler, a wind lidar, and a microwave radiometer will be installed. The wind profiler and the lidar are complementary and allow a precise measurement of the wind from a height of 25 m to 8000 m above ground level. The wind lidar can additionally be used to detect smoke plumes in a radius of 8 km. A microwave radiometer will measure temperature and humidity profiles up to 1.5 km. Examples of observations are shown below. Even if measurements are already available on the Swiss plateau, measurements at Basel will likely improve the simulation of the specific weather situations at the Rhine bend. During this campaign, data from these additional instruments will be used in real-time to improve weather forecasts around Basel. Off-line calculations will be performed to determine the impact of the instruments on weather forecasts in typical weather situations. These simulations are called Observing System Experiments (OSEs) and are commonly used to evaluate the benefit of a specific observation. A scientific collaborator, funded by this project, will work during one year on these experiments and on the report. The collaborator will work in close collaboration with MeteoSwiss teams in Zurich and Payerne. After the project, the benefit of a remote sensing measurement station at Basel to forecast the dispersion of chemicals will be quantified. A strong influence is expected in case of wind shear situations (different wind directions near the ground and further up in the atmosphere) or temperature inversions.
Health-relevant components in atmospheric aerosol Research Project | 4 Project MembersExposure to atmospheric particles has been shown to be related to significant negative health effects and the World Health Organisation identified air pollution particles as the worldwide most severe and urgent public health issue, linked to over three million premature deaths per year worldwide. Despite the decade-long evidence (based on epidemiological and laboratory studies) that link inhalation of ambient aerosol particles with diseases such as respiratory and cardiovascular diseases and lung cancer, it is unclear which particle properties and components are responsible for their toxic effects. It has been proposed that a wide range of oxidising particle components such as peroxides and radicals (so-called ROS, reactive oxygen species), which are present in the particles or which are generated when particles get deposited on the surface of the lung, might be key in explaining atmospheric particle toxicity. However, firm data about oxidising properties of atmospheric aerosol particle is scarce due the unavailability of suitable analytical methods and instruments suitable for field measurements. In addition to the lack of a fundamental understanding of ROS sources in the atmosphere, we recently showed that a up to half or more of the total ROS is short-lived (due to their highly reactive nature) with a lifetime of only a few minutes and therefore conventional filter-based offline analysis methods to quantify ROS are likely underestimating strongly true ROS concentrations. A better understanding of the fundamental particle properties that cause negative health effects and improved measurement capabilities would allow to identify the most toxic particle sources and would ultimately provide the basis for future more effective and efficient air pollution reduction policies. Recognising the potential key importance of ROS in explaining atmospheric particle toxicity but also the significant shortcomings of current methods quantifying and characterising ROS, we therefore aim:(1)to quantify the true total levels of ROS concentrations in ambient atmospheric aerosol in extended field campaigns using our novel online ROS instrument,(2)to identify sources of ROS in aerosol particles and assess the toxicity of these particle sources using lung cell cultures by performing a range of laboratory experiments, (3)to develop a fundamental molecular-level understanding of components contributing to the total particle-bound ROS concentrations, especially organic peroxides, and to develop new methods to characterise and quantify peroxides in laboratory and field experiments.The project proposed here is a strongly interlinked lab and field project, which will significantly advance our knowledge about reactive oxygen species in atmospheric particles, their formation processes, sources and toxicity. This will be essential for a comprehensive understanding of air pollution particle toxicity and to devise improved and efficient air pollution mitigation policies.
CURE: Copernicus for Urban Resilience in Europe Research Project | 3 Project MembersA major challenge for the urban community is the exploitation of the Copernicus products in dealing with the multidimensional nature of urban sustainability towards enhancing urban resilience. Combined information from Copernicus Core Services, namely the Land Monitoring Service (CLMS), the Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), the Climate Change Service (C3S) and the Emergency Management Service (EMS), can provide valuable information to address the multidimensionality of urban resilience. Moreover, the urban planning community needs spatially disaggregated environmental information, at local and city scales. Such information, for all urban environmental parameters, is not directly available from the above Copernicus Core Services, while several data and products from contemporary satellite missions consist valuable tools for retrieving urban environmental parameters at local scale. Therefore, cross-cutting applications among the above Copernicus Core Services may address urban resilience, if they also cope with the required scale with the exploitation of third-party data, in-situ observations and modelling, as appropriate. The main goal of the proposed project CURE (Copernicus for Urban Resilience in Europe) is to synergistically exploit the above Core Services to develop an umbrella cross-cutting application for urban resilience, consisting of individual cross-cutting applications for climate change adaptation/mitigation, energy and economy, as well as healthy cities and social environments, at several European cities. CURE will use DIAS (Data and Information Access Services) to develop a system for integrating these applications, capable of supporting operational applications and downstream services across Europe in the future. CURE will develop synergies with EuroGEOSS and Climate-KIC and provide scenarios on how the developed system could potentially be integrated into the existing Copernicus service architecture, addressing also its economic feasibility.
diFUME Research Project | 4 Project MembersMonitoring CO2 emissions of urban areas has become a necessity for sustainable urban planning and climate change mitigation. The current urban inventories are based on top-down approaches that use fuel and electricity consumption statistics for determining CO2 emissions. Such approaches present consistency issues, neglect the biogenic components of the urban carbon cycle (i.e. vegetation, soil) and have restricted spatial and temporal resolution. The main goal of diFUME is to provide a robust methodology for mapping and monitoring the actual urban CO2 flux at optimum spatial and temporal scales, meaningful for urban design decisions. diFUME will develop, apply and evaluate independent models, capable to estimate all the different components of the urban carbon cycle (i.e. building emissions, traffic emissions, human metabolism, photosynthetic uptake, plant respiration, soil respiration). An innovative interdisciplinary methodology will be introduced, combining two cutting-edge technology tools, the Eddy Covariance (EC) and the latest advances in Earth Observation (EO). EC provides continuous in-situ measurements of CO2 flux at the local scale. Previous EC applications in urban areas have provided valuable insights on the holistic understanding of the urban CO2 flux according to the source/sink distribution in the highly heterogeneous urban environment. EO offers synoptic and continuous monitoring of large areas, capable of enhanced representation of the urban cover, morphology and function. Combined use of EO and EC can provide enhanced interpretation and modelling capabilities to achieve fine scale mapping and monitoring of urban CO2 flux. diFUME methodology will be developed and applied in the case study of Basel, exploiting the unique infrastructure and long-term urban EC measurements. diFUME methodology can be transferable to any city, providing an independent toolbox for consistent urban CO2 emission monitoring, supporting sustainable urban planning strategies.
Molecular level characterisation of aerosol composition and toxicity Research Project | 3 Project MembersOrganic material is the most abundant component in atmospheric particles. The composition and potential toxicity of the organic material is only poorly understood, partly due to the high complexity of the organic compounds present in aerosol particles. This project develops novel high pressure liquid chromatography ultra-high resolution mass spectrometry methods to identify and quantify organic aerosol components that are characteristic for specific sources and which are potentially causing their toxicity, with a focus on peroxides and organic radicals.
