DrJon Paul Faulkner

Air and noise pollution regularly exceed recommended limits in Europe, with significant public health burdens, particularly for the vulnerable. Reducing pollution not only benefits population health but can have co-benefits for reducing carbon emissions and mitigating climate change. Urban pollution is a complex challenge requiring integrative solutions that combine comparative evidence of the impact of measures on pollution reduction and health, with an understanding of their social and economic, and systemic implications. Ambitious change will require that solutions and actions across multiple scales (city/citizens). ATMOPOLIS addresses the combined effects of air and noise pollution in European cities, identifying optimal solutions and supporting top-down (city/region) and bottom-up (community/people) action to achieve aligned pollution and climate mitigation goals. The project will: 1)Assess time-integrated monitored air and noise pollution exposure for specific individual groups, linked to their perceptions, culture, and behavior through personal narratives. 2)Model high-resolution population air pollution and carbon emissions (EU Mission and Green City Accord cities) and derive novel metrics of population noise pollution from community data and models (ATMOPOLIS partner cities) under existing and mitigation scenarios. 3)Evaluate health and wellbeing impacts of exposure under these scenarios, including for vulnerable groups, and identify the social determinants that increase risk. 4)Develop an evidence-driven integrated decision-making tool that identifies optimal cost-effective top-down policy actions by cities; and use persuasive design approaches to leverage emerging digital pollution platforms to support bottom-up change and empowerment. 5)Using system dynamics models and the integrated tool as a framework, co-create with cities informed policy pathways to meet zero pollution and carbon neutrality goals and improve population health and wellbeing for all.

The European (EC) Commission’s A Sustainable Bioeconomy for Europe defines the bioeconomy as, “all sectors and systems that rely on biological resources (animals, plants, micro-organisms and derived biomass, including organic waste), their functions and principles” (European Commission, 2018; 1), whereby a successful bioeconomy, “needs to have sustainability and circularity at its heart” (European Commission, 2018; 1). In line with this definition, and in accordance with the objectives for 1) a sustainable economy and society, 2) the decarbonization of the economy, 3) the promotion of employment and competitiveness, and 4) the creation of regional prosperity, outlined in Ireland’s first National Policy Statement on the Bioeconomy (Government of Ireland, 2018), this research proposes a regionally-based co-produced bioeconomy strategy with particular focus on agricultural and land-use activities. The research applies a bottom-up regionally-based methodology focusing on impact through action-orientated design, based on the co-production of new knowledge to unlock answers to the question of what should be done? This will involve the development of a novel method of testing and then advancing co-designed new approaches using a game-based methodology to ‘problem-solve’ and scenario plan. Initially, baseline strategies will be developed, using both qualitative and quantitative techniques (T2-T5), and will undergo an iterative three round development process involving regional stakeholders to ultimately produce an evidence-based, co-designed set of policies for region-specific application (T6). The co-designed strategy will consist of three capacity building tiers; 1) regional strategies and recommendations based on national and international exemplars of sustainable and circular practice in the agri-food industry; 2) a regional land-use and conflict resolution strategy, whereby the land-use system is interpreted as a governing framework for the bio-economy; and 3) regional strategies and recommendations focusing on solutions for transition to more sustainable farming practices. Finally, a co-designed toolkit will be developed for wider application.

1) The research presents a new conceptual framework for vulnerability and resilience and its operationalisation in rural development, regional policy and deployment in policy practices. 2) The research presents a holistic vulnerability/resilience schematic with wide application as a policy tool in the measurement of how systems or units respond to change in large scale quantitative analysis. 3) The vulnerability/resilience framework and schematic presented in this research has can be tailored to assess the effects of social and welfare policies in rural areas, and thus has the potential to gauge the extent of how policy can impact rural vulnerability. Such a framework could also be applied to the urban context.