Low-Cost Air Quality Sensors and Green Infrastructure to Clean Up City Air

Imagine your city could fight air pollution not with expensive industrial filters, but with clever placement of trees, hedges, and low walls that redirect dirty air away from where people actually walk and live. That's what iSCAPE figured out — they tested these passive "green barriers" in real neighborhoods across 7 European countries, using cheap sensor networks to measure exactly how much they help. They also built a simulator that predicts how people's travel habits change when you redesign streets, so cities can plan smarter. Think of it as using nature and smart design instead of brute-force engineering to make the air you breathe cleaner.

What needed solving

Cities across Europe face worsening air pollution that harms public health and violates EU air quality standards, yet traditional abatement technologies are expensive and hard to retrofit into existing neighborhoods. Municipal planners and environmental managers lack affordable, real-time data on where pollution concentrates at street level and which low-cost interventions actually work. Without evidence-based tools, they cannot justify green infrastructure investments to budget committees or predict how redesigning streets will change both air quality and citizen behavior.

What was built

The project delivered validated low-cost and high-end air quality sensor platforms (through two development cycles with field testing), a data-driven behavioral simulator for predicting how urban interventions change mobility patterns, a real-time monitoring software platform with public API and Virtual Living Lab integration, and documented evidence from physical green infrastructure interventions tested in real city neighborhoods across 7 European countries.

Who needs this

Who can put this to work

Quick answers

Who built it

The iSCAPE consortium of 15 partners across 7 countries (Belgium, Germany, Spain, Finland, Ireland, Italy, UK) is heavily research-oriented with 6 universities and 4 research organizations forming the core. The industry presence is modest at 13% with just 2 industry partners and 2 SMEs — this tells a business buyer that the technology is scientifically rigorous but may need commercial packaging before deployment. University College Dublin led the coordination, which is strong for academic credibility but means a business adopter would likely need to work through the SME partners for practical implementation. The geographic spread across Northern, Southern, and Western Europe means the solutions were tested in varied climates and urban conditions, which is a genuine advantage for transferability.

• UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN, NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND, DUBLINCoordinator · IE
• UNIVERSITEIT HASSELTparticipant · BE
• EUROPEAN NETWORK OF LIVING LABS IVZWparticipant · BE
• THE PROVOST, FELLOWS, FOUNDATION SCHOLARS & THE OTHER MEMBERS OF BOARD, OF THE COLLEGE OF THE HOLY & UNDIVIDED TRINITY OF QUEEN ELIZABETH NEAR DUBLINparticipant · IE
• TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITAT DORTMUNDparticipant · DE
• T6 ECOSYSTEMS SRLparticipant · IT
• CONNECTED PLACES CATAPULTparticipant · UK
• DUBLIN CITY COUNCILparticipant · IE
• ILMATIETEEN LAITOSparticipant · FI
• ALMA MATER STUDIORUM - UNIVERSITA DI BOLOGNAparticipant · IT
• AGENZIA REGIONALE PER LA PREVENZIONE, L'AMBIENTE E L'ENERGIA DELL'EMILIA-ROMAGNAparticipant · IT
• INSTITUT D'ARQUITECTURA AVANCADA DE CATALUNYAparticipant · ES
• UNIVERSITY OF SURREYparticipant · UK
• JRC -JOINT RESEARCH CENTRE- EUROPEAN COMMISSIONparticipant · BE