APCG participates in the GEO Ministerial Summit in Canberra, Australia, presenting the newly made EO platform to assess air quality in around 800 European cities.

 sdg1162

In the frame of SMURBS project, this platform addresses the SDG Goal 11 and specifically the 11.6.2 indicator, which refers to the “Annual mean levels of fine particulate matter (e.g. PM2.5 and PM10) in cities (population weighted)” and works towards SDG target 11.6: “by 2030, reduce the adverse per capita environmental impact of cities, including by paying special attention to air quality and municipal and other waste management.” This application utilizing Copernicus Services, a unique source of completely free and open high quality data (Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service-CAMS and Copernicus Land Monitoring Service-CLMS), and the Joint Research Centre’s (JRC) Global Human Settlement Layer products, creating an elegant tool to i) provide a directly comparable product to the official UN indicator ii) highlight cities-hot spots that drive the Indicator iii) allow for comparisons, both in time and geographically as well as between different city definitions based on the Degree Of Urbanization concept (DEGURBA), i.e. Functional Urban Areas and Urban Centres (see section "Is there a harmonized city definition?") iv) demonstrate straightforwardly the sensitivity of the Indicator to this and the consequent policy implications.