Dr. Evangelos Gerasopoulos (one of the founders of the APCG group) and Prof. Nicolaos Mihalopoulos (associate member of APCG) have recently been interviewed by an ECOTEC journalist on the urban air quality issues related to extreme weather phenomena.
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The human exposure on air plumes from the wildfire events was thoroughly discussed, under the prism of climate change, thus prolongation of dry and hot periods, posing a high fire risk on (peri-urban) forests. APCG group has developed a lot of assets in monitoring the air pollution implications of -among others- wildfire events, through the participation in the big funded projects SMURBS, EMISSION and PANACEA. In particular, Athens AQ network is continuously expanding through investing on smart technologies (low and mid-cost AQ sensors and IoT systems). The use of Citizen Observatories acts as a 'win-win situation', raising both citizen awareness and spatial coverage. Several socio-economic aspects of the urban population (e.g. income, age, ethnicity) and (mental/physical) health issues are directly related to the air quality of urban areas, while their interlinks (will) occupy a great deal of the latest (and future) APCG research activity. |
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