Sensor100 June 2014
4
University ofYork to use ‘cutting-edge approaches’
to urban pollution monitoring
The UK University of York is launching an innovative 3.5m Euro
project which will use new technologies to improve the understand-
ing of urban pollution and its effects on human health and the envi-
ronment.
CAPACITIE (Cutting-Edge Approaches for Pollution Assessment in
Cities) is a Marie Curie Initial Training Net-
work, funded by the European Commission
within the 7th Framework Programme.The
project consists of 16 partner organisations,
in addition to the University of York, which
is the coordinating and host organisation for
the duration of the project.
The CAPACITIE Project will explore a wide range of technologies
for pollution monitoring, including: mobile phones; passive sampling
devices; miniaturised sensing devices; robotics; and state-of-the-art
analytical techniques (such as time of flight mass spectrometry).These
technologies provide a number of advantages over current monitor-
ing methods, because they can:
1 Quantify levels of pollution at greater frequencies and spatial
resolutions than is currently possible;
2 Monitor locations that in the past have been difficult to sam-
ple (e.g. hostile environments or systems with accessibility
issues)
3 Characterise human and ecological exposure to the plethora
of chemicals that have never been monitored before.
