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SMURBS, which stands for SMart URBan Solutions for Air Quality, Disasters and Urban Growth, is a new research project funded through Horizon2020 of the European Commission. It is coordinated by the National Observatory of Athens and includes 19 partners from 12 countries.
With greater numbers of people now living in urban areas, cities are growing and this brings several interlinked associated pressures. SMURBS will work with selected cities in Europe to integrate and unify existing fragmented Earth observation resources (satellite data, in-situ networks and sensors, unmanned aerial systems, models and citizen observatories) under the “smart city” concept, for information and decision making in the areas of air quality, disaster resilience and urban growth, with a view to improve quality of life in urban areas.
The goal of SMURBS is to promote and coordinate the “smart’city’ approach into a European network of cities, serving the need for a common approach to enhance environmental and societal resilience to urban pollution, natural/manmade disasters and uncontrolled city growth, while at the same time setting the stage for integration of the still fragmented, multi’scale and multi’temporal Earth Observation (EO) resources, into information and decision making tools for individuals and local governments.
At the core of the proposed actions lies the creation and exploitation of a portfolio of Smart Urban Solutions, based on the full exploitation of Earth Observation (EO) products, towards increased societal resilience against air pollution (including health impacts and social inequalities), disasters (natural and manmade) and urban growth (including the migrant crisis). The activities include implementation and testing of “smart-city’ solutions in a number of cities, both inside and outside Europe.
The Kick-Off meeting of SMURBS, hosted by ERA-PLANET, took place in Rome on the 9th to the 10th of October 2017 along with three more projects. ERA-PLANET is the European Network for Observing our Changing Planet; a network of 34 partner organizations from 15 European countries and one associated country.
Find out more about SMURBS here.
Follow SMURBS on Twitter here.