Slides Intro to the WP1 tasks 1.2 and 1.4, workshop and speakers (here)
Key points:
Importance of cities and towns has not been recognized for a long time in climate policy, delay in European cities in comparison with the foreign cities (US and Asia), European cities are pretty small as well.
Delays in development of the climate policy in European cities.
Several stages in European cities partnerships.
Climate policy tools: e.g. traffic regulations (national regulations), urban regulatory instruments (seldom used), economic instruments (subsidies, carbon trading), voluntary instruments (climate agreements/contracts), capacity building, enabling, cooperation and networking. Hardening of the voluntary instruments (e.g. carbon budgets). There is a continues problem with the funding on the local scale.
The problem of integration of climate mitigation and adaptation (in some cities respective units were dissolved).
When pilot projects run, there is a problem of scalability (scaling within and beyond cities) and sustainability (funds are provided for 3-5 year projects).
Need to strengthen governance capacity, take spatial dimension into account, scaling of local experiments and matching cities.
Delay between development of policies and their implementation. There is also a lack of connection between the people involved in the policy development and implementation. There is an issue of “linearity” of thinking when developing policy instruments. We need to connect people with decision and policy makers. The approach is to combine system approaches with human centric implementation.
Round tables about challenges in communication of the GHG data to stakeholders, how to make GHG data to have impact.
2 rounds of the World Café about communication with user and stakeholders and the way how the emission information services has to be designed.
6 March
General Assembly
all WPs
Changes in SAP (John Lin and Kim Mueller are co-chairs)
WP1: urban emission inventory, co-design the service prototype, human dimension and climate policy: interesting finding is that human respiration is missing in inventories (8-10%), road transport emissions are underestimated by 20%.
WP2: modelling, includes 5 tasks dealing with dynamic high resolution emission modelling, biologic fluxes, inverse modelling, low-cost sensors data assimilation, characterization of turbulence and boundary conditions. Emission downscaling to 100 m. Connection between eddy covariance and emission inventory. 9 modelling systems are used (biogenic flux dynamic models, mesoscale models, topography and turbulence resolving models, footprint modelling).
WP 3 Observations for input for inverse models, to constrain process based models and as evaluation datasets. Issue with the implementation is to get permission for sensor installation at the roof top (mid and low cost sensors). Observations that are included: precise atmospheric measurements at the towers, mid and low cost sensors on street and roof tops, eddy covariance flux towers, ground based remote sensing. There is a number of co-emitted species and isotopic composition are measured. In the case of Zurich attribution within the day strongly disagree with the inventory in the morning (lowers emissions) and agrees well in the afternoon.
WP 4 on data management (integrated in the ICOS data portal).
WP5: Cities network, school cooperation and outreach and communication. Outreach and communication activities for 3 pilot cities and 12 network cities. Work with schools and on stakeholder engagement (with WP1)
WP6 is on connection of current activities and future. This is connected with individual cities and with the research infrastructure. Connection to air quality is required for the future, but also co-emitted and different platforms (satellite, mobile measurements) should be considered.
Invited talk on blockchain (digital service that consumes a lot of energy). Wants to go as a trustworthy digital services for the collection, processing and sharing of the GHG concentrations from sensors in the Paris region in ICOS Cities. Blockchain is a spin off from EDF.
7 March
Cross-WP talks
all WPs
WP1 and WP5 conducted a braistorming on the user engagement workshop planned in Barcelona in May. The format, objectives and participants were discussed. Based on the feebback proveded by the city of Barcelona, the engagement of the local stakholders was not sufficient enough, the workshop is postponed till autumn.
