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Context

Air quality in Romania and EU background behind ROMAIR………………3

Project

Project objectives and fact sheet…………………………………………………………4

Partners…………………………………………….……………………………………………….5

Results and their dissemination

Results and their dissemination………………………………………………………..6

Virtual dissemination…………………………………………………………..………… 11

Physical dissemination………………………………….………………………………….12

Forthcoming dissemination activities………………….…………………….…… 13

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Atmospheric pollution is an important challenge for all the

European Members, since there is clear evidence of its

dangerous consequences both on health and environment.

Atmospheric pollution is a complex problem, since it is an

extended phenomenon, generated by many activities, such as

rising industrial and energy production, burning of fossil of

fuels, increasing road traffic, residential heating, etc.

For more than 40 years, EU has been implementing directives

to tackle air pollutants. The Ambient Air Quality directives

insists on the need to institute targets regarding ambient air

quality in the European Union; evaluate ambient air quality in

all the member States of the European Union, based on

common methods and criteria; obtain adequate information

which are then given to the public through various means;

maintain ambient air quality where it is good or otherwise

improve it.

The European Union's Directives have been integrated into

Romanian legislation; the necessary administrative structure

has been established and put into practice; the Romanian

Government adopted a National Strategy concerning Climate

Change in July 2005, implying a coordinated and concentrated

effort for preparing the adaptations necessary to meet the

possible effects of climate change until 2013.

Bucharest, capital of Romania, has a population of 2.000.000

inhabitants. It is the largest city of Romania, as well as the financial,

cultural and industrial capital of the country. Like other European cities,

pollution has become a major concern for the city.

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ROMAIR provides the appropriate tools to the Environment Protection agencies

(national as well as regional and local) to:

The ROMAIR LIFE+ project aims at helping the Romanian authorities to improve

public health and quality of life, with a comprehensive air quality modeling and

forecasting system.

The system implemented provides the authorities with complementary tools for

air quality management enabling operational air quality forecasting as well as

strategic planning for the study of future emission reduction scenarios. Moreover,

it encourages changes in citizens’ behaviour as far as air quality and environment

are concerned.

Identify the critical areas and the critical

pollutants

Assist in the implementation of the

Romanian laws derived from European

Directives on Air Quality

Evaluate the efficiency of the actions

proposed at various levels on the ambient

air quality before implementing them

Assess the interaction between actions

oriented towards pollution reduction

Base their future emissions reduction plans

on initial inventories

Explore the impact of climate change on

Public Health, due to the evolution of the

meteorological conditions above Romania

Project factsheet

Project type : Life+

Project website : www.romair.eu

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Contact: Mr. MOUSSAFIR Jacques Aria Technologies

8-10 rue de la Ferme 92100 Boulogne Billancourt (France) Tel: +331 46 08 68 60

E-mail: jmoussafir@aria.fr

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ARIA Technologies was founded in 1990 in Paris to respond to

a single concern, the atmospheric environment, through

numerical simulation of the dispersion of pollutants in the

atmosphere. This single focused specialization has enabled ARIA

Technologies to build a comprehensive team of engineers,

research scientists, and environment specialists who bring

together the knowledge of fluid dynamics, meteorology,

atmospheric chemistry, applied computing, database

management, and geographic information systems.

The National Environment Protection Agency (NEPA) is a

public institution with legal personality, financed by the

national budget, subordinated to Ministry of Environment and

Sustainable Development (MESD), with responsibilities in

policies and legislation implementation in the environment

protection domain. Its main objectives are the strengthening of

Romania's administrative, monitoring and enforcement

capacities and capabilities at national, regional and local level in

the environment protection domain.

RSI Electro is a provider of measurements thanks to its own

mobile laboratories. Its core competences are located in

monitoring systems for environmental quality, mobile

laboratories for air pollution monitoring, gas monitoring

systems for the control of industrial procedures, detection

systems dedicated to toxic and explosive gases, oxygen

measurement equipments and waste water measurement

systems.

Euroquality is a service provider established in 1997

specialised in Innovation and European research projects. Its

main activities are consultancy in innovation, technology

transfer, economical studies and policy evaluation,

technological audits and the management of European

research and development projects. Euroquality is also an

expert of IT developments and communication services.

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The various data necessary for air quality modeling has been

geolocalized and incorporated into a GIS database. The

ROMAIR ArcGIS database includes the geographic boundaries

for all administrative entities (regions, judetes, and

municipalities), emissions sources (LPS, traffic links, area

sources, airports,...), land-use characteristics, air quality and

meteorological stations etc. The database has further been

completed with information on emissions sources (LPS, traffic

links, area sources, airports,...) as well as statistics on

population and fuel consumption for the different

administrative entities. NEPA was responsible for collecting the

data for the ROMAIR GIS database and ARIA Technologies was

in charge of data processing and for selecting which data to

use for the air quality modeling.

Traffic data collection and traffic emission modeling

The calculation of traffic flow and traffic emissions in Romania

with special focus on Bucharest has been carried out within the

framework of the ROMAIR project. For this purpose, all

relevant information on the road traffic structure in Romania

has been collected (road infrastructure, vehicle flow,

composition of the vehicle fleet).

The set of traffic counting data collected was provided by the

Romanian Auto Register (RAR) and the Ministry of Transport.

The models CarUSO (traffic assignment model) and TREFIC

(emission calculation model) were configured and applied for

the ROMAIR traffic simulations.

The models CarUSO (traffic assignment model) and TREFIC

(emission calculation model) were configured and applied for

the ROMAIR traffic simulations.

Inventory of emission sources

An exhaustive inventory of emission sources in Romania was

carried out by collecting available data for the most recent

year. The data collected for ROMAIR is largely based on a

bottom up approach and includes state-of-the art emission

inventory estimations and calculations for Romania. The data

collection was organised by NEPA and involved a large number

of data providers. The final ROMAIR emission database

contains:

Over 4 000 large point sources (industrial stacks, flares,...)

16 420 line sources (on-road traffic, maritime routes, air traffic corridors,...)

About 8 000 area sources (areas with diffuse emissions such as residential heating, agricultural activities, evaporation losses from extraction and distribution of fossil fuels,...)

Emission Manager

All the data from the emissions inventory was aggregated and

processed with a modular package called Emission Manager

which processes and prepares model-ready inputs for the

chemical transport model CHIMERE.

a special consideration was given to the VOC emissions,

which require further segregation into individual species.

Using the basic IER profiles, VOC emissions were split

over 334 VOC species

source geometry (polygons, lines, points) were projected

to the regular modeling grid cells

total emissions accounted for in the emission inventory

were modulated in time according to the activity

patterns for each sector.

Merge of Global and Local Emission Inventory

In order to avoid simulating a domain with “clean-air”

inflow over the territory of Romania, the emissions

from neighboring countries has been accounted for.

The emission data is taken from the EMEP database

(European Monitoring and Evaluation Program) and

includes a large part of Europe, Turkey, Ukraine and

the south western part of the Russian Federation. The

figure illustrates the emissions of NO2 obtained on the

three ROMAIR modeling domains after integration of

the global (EMEP) inventory and the local ROMAIR

inventory carried out by NEPA.

Meteorological and Dispersion Models

The sequence of forecast and simulation models used

in the ROMAIR system for meteorology (WRF) and air

quality (CHIMERE) is widely used by Public Bodies in

France and in Europe.

The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model

is a numerical weather prediction (NWP) and

atmospheric simulation system designed for both

research and operational applications. The CHIMERE

multi-scale model is primarily designed to produce

daily forecasts of ozone, aerosols and other pollutants

and make long-term simulations for emission control

scenarios. It has been developed by the association of

three main French laboratories (IPSL, INERIS and LISA).

The ROMAIR air quality forecasting

system implemented at NEPA has been adapted and

tuned to Romanian conditions. The operational

system is issuing daily reports to inform on the

dispersion of criteria pollutants and maps of pollution

levels are available to the public on the ROMAIR web

site.

Validation of the models and LIDAR field campaign

For the validation of the photochemical dispersion

model, CHIMERE, daily predictions where compared

with observations at a selection of ambient air quality

stations. Hourly time series of air quality data were

extracted from the model predictions and compared

to experimental data, focusing on high pollution

episodes for O3, NO2 and PM10. RSI carried out a

measurement campaign with the objective to verify

the validity of several key air quality stations used in

the validation process.

To increase the accuracy of the models and to provide

access to innovative modeling technologies, a twin

LIDAR (acronym for LIght Detection And Ranging) was

used for obtaining vertical wind velocity profiles (wind

LIDAR) and mixing height (aerosol LIDAR) over

Bucharest.

RSI

Definition and simulation of emission reduction

scenarios.

The validated modeling system was finally applied in

scenario mode for evaluating national and regional

plans related to emission abatement strategies aiming

to reduce air pollution.

Five scenarios were elaborated and defined jointly by

NEPA and ARIA in collaboration with local authorities

and project stakeholders who had a consulting role for

elaborating and approving strategies on emission

reduction. The scenarios chosen should be considered

as indicators of realistic short or medium term

solutions to air quality problems and traffic planning.

Training and capacity building

Throughout the whole ROMAIR project, various

training sessions on the models were performed in

accordance with the main steps of the project

implementation. The objective was to perform

training in a way to optimize transfer of knowledge.

The training program included ten different sessions

and was further divided into “expert” training (with

one or a couple of participants) and “general” training

sessions (for a larger ROMAIR target group).

At the final phase of the project, a capacity building

session was organized comprising 10 days of technical

training. The main objective of this action was to

enable local users of the ROMAIR modeling system to

reach the highest level possible of autonomy on the

new system and models implemented in order to

maximize its use as a decision-making tool. A general

presentation of the ROMAIR project results, targeting

different stakeholders in Romania, was organized in

June 2012.

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What is meant by “virtual campaign”?

The ROMAIR virtual

campaign is the result of

various online actions and

activities targeting the

Romanian population. The

main objective is to increase

the public awareness about

air quality and air pollution.

Online public portal (www.romair.eu)

Information on the project, its main achievements

and events.

Modeling results and quarterly newsletter

Restricted access for experts

(www.romair.eu/cms)

Access to real time information on air

pollution quality and forecasts in Romania

during the model implementation phase

Exchange of project documents

Virtual campaign on best practices (through

the website’s “Learn More” tab)

Focus on heating systems and vehicles

Focus on how to reduce everyone’s

contribution to CO2 emissions

Campaign through others means (local

municipalities, leaflets, brochures,

conferences…) for those who don’t have

access to the Internet

Forum

Possibility for visitors to submit questions

about the project, which are directly sent to

the Project team’s mailbox

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Press releases about the project

Posters

Project leaflets

Information panel

Newsletters

Communication with the major Romanian

stakeholders

Presentation of the project and its results

Information about air quality modeling

Diffusion of the ROMAIR forecast system

among Romanian municipalities

Participation/Organisation/Hosting of several

events to communicate about ROMAIR

Among them :

o POLLUTEC environmental exhibition in

France and Morocco which were held in

Paris, Lyon and Casablanca, the years 2010

and 2011. ARIA had their own stand at these

exhibitions and promoted ROMAIR with the

ROMAIR poster and ROMAIR newsletters

and leaflets

o HARMO 13 Paris (France) in June 2010 and

HARMO 14 Kos (Greece) in October 2011

(international conference on "Harmonisation

within Atmospheric Dispersion Modeling for

Regulatory Purposes”). ARIA disseminated

ROMAIR with newsletters and leaflets as

well as with a poster presentation of the

ROMAIR project results.

Dissemination in figures

- 8 posters (4 in English, 4

in Romanian)

- 1000 leaflets (500 in

English, 500 in Romanian)

- More than 15 attended

events

- More than 2200 online

visitors

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Even after the end of the project (June 2012), dissemination activities are to be pursued.

Among others…

The whole content of the website, including the seven

newsletters, have been translated to Romanian, in order

to facilitate communication with the local population.

A communication campaign is to be held in Romanian

schools, in order to increase awareness of the children

on environmental topics. The problematic is to be

tackled in an enjoyable way. Best practices are to be

presented so that children can learn how to become

more environmental-friendly in the every life.

Thanks to the already existing dissemination tools,

ROMAIR is to be promoted on the next important

international events dealing with environment, such as:

o The next POLLUTEC exhibition, which is to be

held in Lyon (France), the 27-20 November

2012

o HARMO 15, which is to be held in Madrid

(Spain), the 6-9 May 2012

o EUROPEAN MOBILITY WEEK: Bucharest

(Romania) - September 2013