Expected Outcome:
Projects are expected to contribute to the following outcomes:
- Methods for more precisely assessing exposure to air, water, soil and/or noise pollution, health impacts and public information at regional and/or local level;
- Methods for better assessing exposure of vulnerable groups (including due to socio-economic context) to air, water, soil and/or noise pollution at regional and/or local level, enabling more precise evidence to inform health impact assessments;
- Improved and comparable assessment of mortality and morbidity impacts of air, water, soil and/or noise pollution at regional and/or local level;
- Improved understanding of the role of behavioural economics, psychology and organizational behaviour to design measures oriented to lower pollution in urban environments;
- Improved understanding of the correlation between improving environmental quality of urban spaces and human health and wellbeing;
- Methods for determining the sources of air pollutants at urban level so that local authorities, stakeholders and citizens know the proportion of the pollutant emissions attributable to urban transport, heating etc.
- Comparative analysis of selected successful pollution reduction/abatement strategies at local level and identify key factors underlying such successes and their replication potential.
All projects are required to:
- Develop methods and tools that can swiftly be deployed and used by cities and regional authorities. Once implemented they should help policy makers prioritise actions, and address social aspects of zero pollution policies,
- Support implementation of zero pollution policies by overcoming barriers to behavioural change which natural science and evidence alone cannot overcome. New approaches to address these barriers should be explored from the angles of behavioural economics, psychology, communication and organisational behaviour, with a view to inform effective local and regional zero pollution policies.
Project(s) funded under this topic should involve at least two cities. Ideally at least one city in each project should be a city selected for the EU Mission Climate-Neutral Smart Cities and/or a city signatory to the EU Green City Accord (these can be the same city).