Monitoring and improving air quality in Balearic Islands

Air pollution is one of the biggest environmental risks to health, being one of the main causes of mortality worldwide. Recent studies have analyzed the impact of shipping activity on pollution port areas, as well as in urban areas close to ports. Ships emissions, as well as port operations processes, constitute an important gaseous and particulate pollution source on the global scale, but also at a local scale in coastal and port regions, in which cities have a greater exposition to air pollution due to the rapid expansion of their ports. In Europe, shipping generated over 90% of transport-related SO₂ emissions.

The Balearic port authority (BPA) wanted to improve its knowledge and its environmental control of air and noise pollution, its transparency towards citizenship, all along with a cost-effective solution.

We have deployed 150 micro-sensors in 5 ports of the islands: Palma, Eivissa, Maó, Alcúdia and La Savina. These units control air pollution (PM, SO₂, NO₂, CO, O₃, NO), noise and integrate meteorological measurements. All this data feeds an advanced mathematical modeling platform named Airadvanced-Vision360, which creates reports and obtains aggregate information through air quality indices.  All the data are available in a dashboard on the client website.

For the Port Authority of the Balearic Islands, the benefits are to:

• assess the impact of air quality and noise in urban areas near the ports in real-time
• visualize the monitoring data and forecast the impact on air quality
• have an early warning system to make decisions
• study proposals to reduce emissions with a direct improvement of the quality of life of the users of the port and the citizens nearby
  

*In collaboration with Kunak Technologies