In close collaboration with the University of Bologna (UNIBO) and the Environmental Protection Agency of Emilia-Romagna (ARPAE), the Bologna Living Lab organized a long monitoring session from February 7 to March 9 2023.

The aim of this activity was to evaluate the level of air pollution in two trafficked neighbourhood of the city centre and capture to which extent meteorological and thermal properties of the environment, rather than its morphological characteristics, contribute to enhance or reduce these pollution amounts. Focal points of this investigation are the two Department of Physics and Astronomy (DIFA) of UNIBO, where thousands of students and academics are subdued by large amount of pollutants from the access roads, consinsitng of major traffic arteries of the city centre.

The Bologna Living Lab team (Silvana Di Sabatino, Erika Brattich, Francesco Barbano, Carlo Cintolesi) have managed the monitoring activities in close collaboration with ARPAE. Researchers of the Bologna Living Lab are now working to extrapolate key information from the data allowing to elaborate possible solutions to decrease people exposure favouring their wellbeing. 

By Silvana Di Sabatino, Francesco Barbano, Erika Brattich, Carlo Cintolesi, University of Bologna (UNIBO)