Jo provides expert advise at Air Quality Hackathon in London this weekend

Jo will be providing expert advise at the Future Cities Catapult Air Quality Hackathon in London this weekend. The event, which has nearly 100 registrants so far, aims to get designers, data scientist and creative technologists working with a multitude of relevant datasets to come up with solutions to the following questions:

•  How could data help policymakers to make more informed decisions around air quality?
•  How could we reduce the number of short journeys made by car and encourage more active mobility?
• How could we design tools or services to help people understand the causes or effects of air pollution? 

Jo will be presenting, alongside Professor Frank Kelly (KCL) and Usman Haque (Umbrellium), on Air Quality Management and Policy to set the context for the event and will remain on-hand throughout to deal with any questions and as part of the judging panel to award the best hacks. Further details of the event can be found here: http://www.urbaninnovationcentre.org.uk/event/air-quality-hackathon

 

Disruption Citizen Workshops

Tim is in Leeds on Friday and Saturday this week, working with the Institute of Transport Studies at Leeds University running citizen engagement workshops for the Disruption project. 

www.disruptionproject.net

www.fleximobility.solutions

Jim, Jo & Huw at Air Pollution 2015

Last week, Jim Longhurst, Jo Barnes & Huw Brunt attended the 23rd International Conference on Modelling, Monitoring and Management of Air Pollution 2015 in Valencia, Spain. Jim & Jo, as conference co-chairs, presented the keynote and invited presentations respectively, while Huw presented on his PhD research on air quality management and public health. The conference was very well attended with 90+ delegates registered and a very interesting range of presentations from across the field. The conference proceedings are also now published: Longhurst, J.W.S.,   Capilla, C., Brebbia, C.A.  & Barnes, J. (Editors) (2015). Air Pollution XXIII. WIT Press, Southampton and Boston. pp466, ISBN: 978-1-84564-964-7. 

New publication

Following the recent Air Pollution 2015 conference, the proceedings have been published. Professor Jim Longhurst & Dr Jo Barnes are co-chairs and editors of this publication.

 

Longhurst, J.W.S.,   Capilla, C., Brebbia, C.A.  & Barnes, J. (Editors) (2015). Air Pollution XXIII. WIT Press, Southampton and Boston. pp. 466, ISBN: 978-1-84564-964-7.

Soapbox Science Success

Jo was one of 12 female scientists (though the only one from UWE) selected to participate in the Soapbox Science event in Millennium Square in Bristol yesterday afternoon. Blessed with warm sunshine and an engaged and interested audience, the event was a huge success and a lot of fun! The aim of Soapbox Science is to raise the profile of women in science, however Jo's primary goal was to raise public awareness about air pollution. Armed with a arsenal of props, an hour's worth of spiel and the mandatory white coat, Jo talked, atop her box, about what air pollution was, where it came from and what it did to us, as well as getting the audience to think about how they could reduce their own exposure as well as reduce their emissions. Given that Bristol was selected for European Green Capital status in 2015 in part for its track record on air quality management, it was apt that this subject seemed to strike such a chord with the public.

New paper for MOT project accepted

Tim and Jo have just had a paper accepted by the prestigious journal Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment. The paper, co-authored with Prof. Jillian Anable at Aberdeen University, Prof. Eddie Wilson at Bristol and Dr Sally Cairns at TRL sets out methodologies for the spatial analysis of emissions from private car usage using annual vehicle test data. Maths work has been funded by the EPSRC under the RCUK Energy Programme with DfT and DECC as project partners. It is expected the paper will be available online within a couple of months.

Tim takes MOT and Disruption to France

This week (1st-6th June), Tim will be attending the ECEEE Summer Study near Toulon in France, where he will be giving presentation on the MOT project and running a workshop on the Disruption project for over 480 energy efficiency experts from across Europe and beyond.