An AURORA pilot project (called AIR-Portal 4 Florence), aimed at monitoring ozone concentrations in the Florence urban area, started in August 2018 and will run for 1 year.
The first 3 months are dedicated to development, followed by a 3 month validation period. The actual operational pilot will run for 6 months, starting in February 2019. AIR-Portal 4 Florence has been developed in collaboration with ARPAT (Agenzia Nazionale per la Protezione Ambientale – Toscana), IFAC-CNR (AURORA project leader) and S[&]T (developer of the AURORA application AIR-Portal) with the goal of monitoring pollution in the city and provide citizens with hourly information about air quality. Near real time ground station measurements are being supplied by ARPAT and used by S[&]T in the AIR-Portal4Florence application for calibration and validation. Support with data verification and validation is being provided by IFAC-CNR.
The service is currently being integrated by S&T and will become fully operational in early 2019. ARPAT will use AIR-Portal4Florence to inform citizens and public authorities about air quality conditions by displaying AIR-Portal images and ozone concentrations in the ARPAT website.
After the first 6 months operational period, the cover will be extended to additional species (such as for example NO2, and PM) and to other critical areas in Tuscany, such as the industrial area around Prato.
This pilot is a concrete example of the excellent collaboration between the scientific and industry partners of the AURORA consortium.
