Life Emerald

Life Emerald is a new project concerned with improving our understanding of the state of Irish air quality.

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Life Emerald

This 3-year project commencing in 2021 will have the following objectives: National 3-day air quality forecast, near real-time mapping of air pollutants throughout the country and creating historical maps of air pollutants.

Project Information

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The key goal is to strengthen air quality management in Ireland to ensure effective implementation of the EU Ambient Air Quality Directives (AAQD) and to help implement the European Green Deal.

This project will greatly improve Ireland’s air quality management capabilities by:

  • Building upon previous and current LIFE projects (ATMOSYS, LIFE IP’s Malopolska and HungAIRy) and national projects in Ireland
  • Testing, and where possible, applying new methodologies currently being investigated in ongoing and proposed EU projects, e.g. new EU spatial assessment methodology of monitoring networks.
Further project details

Project Actions

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The ATMOSYS Air Quality Information System Requirements

  • Measurement Campaign for Model Validation & Awareness Rising
  • An improved residential solid fuel inventory for Ireland
  • Establishment of an operational 3-day ambient air quality forecasting and alerting system for Ireland
  • Set-up of sustainable service to produce historical baseline air quality maps
  • Assessing the ATMO-Street model service for delivering policy information
  • Implementation of a near real-time air quality mapping application to improve the air quality information being disseminated to the public
  • Customization, implementation, and continued operation of the ATMOSYS air quality management dashboard for Ireland
  • Spatial representativeness assessment of the Irish Monitoring network based on an EU spatial representativeness assessment study
  • Using the ATMOSYS system to support local air quality measures and plans
  • Monitoring of the performance indicators
  • Monitoring of the social-economic impacts of the project actions
  • Outreach and dissemination activities to citizens & local stakeholder associations
  • Outreach and dissemination to policymakers across Ireland
  • Outreach and networking across the EU
  • Project Management

Project Partners

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The EPA is an independent public body established under the Environmental Protection Agency Act, 1992.

The other main instruments from which the EPA derives its mandate are the Waste Management Act, 1996, and the Protection of the Environment Act, 2003 and the Radiological Protection (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2014.

Full details on the EPA's Roles & Responsibilities

Our Project Partners are 

  • ASI
  • DCCAE
  • HSE
  • UCC
  • VITO
Project partners details