Horizon 2020 CLAiR-City project
Techne Consulting is a partner of the Clair-City project (Citizen Led Air pollution Reduction in Cities), funded by the European Community in the framework of Horizon 2020 with over € 6.5 million, started on may 2016 and with duration 48 months. It is conducted by a consortium of universities (University of the West of England, Bristol, United Kingdom; Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal, Danmarks Tekniske Universitet, Denmark), research centers (Norsk Institutt for Luftforskning NILU, Norway), government agencies (Ministerie van Infrastrutture en Milieu, Netherlands, Centraal Bureau voor de Statistic, Netherlands), international organizations (Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe, Hungary) and SMEs (Trinomics, Netherlands, Techne Consulting, Italy, Transport & Mobility Leven, Belgium).
The project follows the Research and Innovation actions type of funding scheme and addresses the Topic SC5-04-2015 - “Improving the Air Quality and Reducing the Carbon Footprint of European Cities”.
CLAiR-City will apportion air pollution emissions and concentrations, carbon footprints and health outcomes by city citizens’ behaviour and day-to-day activities in order to make these challenges relevant to how people chose to live, behave and interact within their city environment. Through an innovative engagement and quantification toolkit, we will stimulate the public engagement necessary to allow citizens to define a range of future city scenarios for reducing their emissions to be used for supporting and informing the development of bespoke city policy packages out to 2050.
Abruzzo Region of Italy - Update of air quality plan
On 13 January 2022, the Regional Council of the Abruzzo Region adopted the provision aimed at updating the Air Quality Regional Plan which has, among its main purposes, the identification of "quality objectives of the air aimed at avoiding, preventing or reducing harmful effects on human health "and at maintaining the quality of the ambient air, where good, and improving it in other cases. The update of the Air Quality Regional Plan, which will replace the previous Plan, contains plans and measures aimed at avoiding exceeding the limit values and limit levels, reducing the risk of exceeding the limit values, objective and alarm thresholds in the areas where the risk of exceeding the alarm threshold arises, to limit the duration of any episodes of exceeding, with the relative provision of interventions to be implemented in the short term to achieve these purposes. The Plan was drawn up with the support of Techne Consulting srl as part of the assignment of the Abruzzo Region for "Updating the Regional Plan for the Protection of Air Quality"
Expert Panel on Clean Air in Cities (EP-CAC)
The 2° meeting of the Expert Panel on Clean Air in Cities (EP-CAC), in the frame of UNECE Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution) was held remotely on 29 September 2020 due to restrictions in place in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The Expert Panel works under the auspices of the UNECE Task Force on Integrated Assessment Modelling. The mission of the Expert Panel on Clean Air in Cities is to analyse and communicate the potential benefits of multi-scale air quality management and find an optimal mix of local, national and international policy actions. In the frame of the Panel our Technical Director was co-author of the presentation on The Main Lesson and the next steps of the ClairCity project project realized in the frame of EuropeanUnion’s EU_H2020 research and innovation programme.
Umbria Region of Italy - Update of Air Quality Plan
With the D.G.R. n.741 of 28 July 2021, the Proposal for the Update of the Regional Plan for Air Quality of the Italian Umbria Region was adopted. Attachments to the resolution are Annex A) Update of the Regional Plan for Air Quality and Annex B) Scenarios for updating the PRQA. The update of the Plan is consistent with the Program Agreement between the Umbria Region and the Minister of the Environment for the rehabilitation of the air quality in the TernI Basin. The identified remediation actions mainly aim to reduce emissions produced by vehicular traffic and domestic heating systems, with particular reference to the use of biomass in fireplaces and stoves. This objective is pursued both by implementing incentive measures and prescriptive measures. Annex B to the Plan reports the study carried out by Techne Consulting on behalf of ARPA Umbria in the frame of the "Service for the Update of the Regional Air Quality Plan" relating to the assessment of air quality and the development of emissions scenarios.
Our history: Haven ship accident information system
Thirty years have passed since the explosion on 11 April 1991 aboard the oil tanker Haven in front of Genoa Voltri. The outbreak causes 5 deaths, 30 injuries and the largest ecological disaster in the Mediterranean. Over 140 thousand tons of crude oil catch fire, the oily mass pours along the western coast and the Haven sinks a few miles off the coast of Arenzano. Techne Consulting created a few months later for ENEA and the Ministry of the Environment an information system relating to the environmental damage resulting from the accident on the Haven ship which collected all the data and maps of the accident and the environmental monitoring campaigns carried out in the area.