Through the ICLEI Action Fund, Danish non-profit organisation Miljøpunkt Amager (MPA) harnessed environmental data, implementing pilots that reduce air pollution. The results were quantifiable: the pilots reduced fine particle pollution by up to 13 percent.

The ICLEI Action Fund is a granting scheme led by ICLEI in collaboration with Google.org, which has granted around 2.5 million EUR to six organisations and academic institutions in Europe to implement projects based on environmental and climate data from open and private sources. MPA is the first ICLEI Action Fund subgrantee to finalise its project, which ran for one year in ICLEI Member Copenhagen.

“Managing air pollution in cities needs an integrated vision to protect human health and improve public spaces. Working with cities, civil society and local partners is critical, but data on air quality, population movement, car pollution and other components of daily life are also needed,” explained Alis-Daniela Torres, Climate Senior Officer at ICLEI Europe.

The project

The Danish project, called “Thrive Zone Amager (TZA)”, put in place green installations in three spaces in the Ørestad neighbourhood of Copenhagen: two ‘domes’ and a green wall. The former refers to frame-less domes clad in translucent polycarbonate with interior planting and furnishings to create comfortable and healthy indoor spaces. The project used data from Google Air View and the Environmental Insights Explorer (EIE) to design these urban spaces as alternatives for citizens to use to spend time outdoors while protected from air pollution.

The goal of the project was to create a model to test the impacts of such green interventions and to better understand local behaviour in specific areas of the city. The project made use of urban mobility, air quality and demographic data both to create the interventions and to analyse their impacts.

The TZA analysis process followed a technical approach – sensors placed outside the installations captured the concentration of ultrafine particles and 2.5-micrometre matter particles (PM 2.5) in the air, while internal sensors calculated data related to indoor air. After the first month of data collection, results showed significant reductions in air pollutants across the board.

The first installation was rolled out in August 2021, when TZA installed a wooden green wall between a high-traffic road and a residential area. The wall was divided into two parts: a single column with plants scattered throughout the wood, and a double column with plants placed close together. Beyond the wall, a playground was set up on a wooden platform to invite local families to use the space. While the “thicker” wall registered a 3-5 percent decrease in PM 2.5 concentration with respect to the air going from the road towards the playground. The real surprise came from the single wall, which registered an impressive 3 percent reduction in pollutants.

A little further down the district, two domes made of polycarbonate were installed: one with a 5-metre diameter between residential buildings and one with a 3.5-metre diameter next to a bus stop separated from the street by a green wall. The larger dome registered a 12 percent decrease in PM 2.5 concentration and 13 percent in ultrafine particles. In the case of the smaller “dome”, air filtered by the green wall showed a 4 percent decrease in pollutants even before reaching the dome.

At first, the installations were planned to be temporary and run for one month. However, thanks to the analysis and positive public feedback, both domes remain active. The larger dome is now being maintained jointly by the local landowners' associations and the Ørestad water association (GFS Ørestad), while the smaller one has been moved to an allotment community.

Data and recommendations

In addition to making use of data from Google Air View and the Environmental Insights Explorer (EIE) to design the interventions, a different, experimental data set has also been collected since the domes were installed, which indicate that installations of this type can help to reduce the concentration of air pollutants, especially PM, in cities.

The team considers the project a success. “We are very pleased with the great interest of the community in our project. In all, nearly 1,000 citizens participated in our surveys, workshops and events, sharing their routines and problems with air quality. We are very proud,” said MPA Director Dorte Grastrup-Hansen.

The project team has prepared a guide with design recommendations to reduce exposure to air pollution, which you can read here.
For more information and to see pictures of the installations, visit action-fund.iclei-europe.org.