Integrated systems approach to managing urban pollution

This paper outlines a new integrated decision-support framework for a more sustainable management of urban pollution, developed within the project ‘Pollutants in the urban environment’ (PUrE). The framework comprises a suite of appropriate models and tools that can be selected by different stakeholders or end-users (such as policy-makers, local authorities, industry, researchers and non-government organisations) to conduct simple screening studies and/or detailed modelling assessments of the effects of pollution in the urban environment. The models and tools enable consideration of individual pollutants and their mixtures released from a wide range of urban sources, as well as evaluation of local and global effects of urban pollution. Examples of the tools and models integrated into the decision-support framework include: life-cycle assessment; substance flow analysis; air and water dispersion and advection modelling; and human health assessment. The important features of the framework are that it is tiered, flexible and modular, allowing the users to choose the appropriate models or tools as well as decision-making paths, depending on their needs and the type of decision-making problem they are addressing. Although the framework is in its early stages of development, its application has already been demonstrated on a number of case studies, as detailed in this paper.