SMURBS

Shortly before the new millennium, world’s population reached the threshold of 6 billion of people. A few years later, more than half of the Earth’s population was living in the cities and according to the United Nations we can expect increase of this number to 2/3 by 2050. Inhabitants of the city have to face various pressures connected to the urban environment. Project SMURBS (SMart URBan Solutions for air quality, disasters and city growth) tries to find smart solutions to tackle these urban pressures. SMURBS  has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, as the winning project of ERA-PLANET‘s transnational call under Strand 1 “Smart Cities and Resilient Societies”,  with the aim of promoting the “smart‐city” concept through the integration of Earth’s Observation (EO). SMURBS aspires to increase urban resilience targeting challenges with respect to air quality, urban growth, natural/manmade disasters and relevant impacts and more entangled issues such as the migrant crisis and the health implications of such environmental pressures.

SMURBS project consists of 7 working packages (WP). The first WP is dedicated to coordination of the project. The second WP is aiming to find what are users needs in regard of urban pressures. The third WP is dealing with EO and citizen data collection, processing and analysis. The third WP will be transmuted into the fourth WP creating portfolio of smart urban solutions. The fifth WP is focused on utilization of created urban solutions, tools and approaches in selected smart city pilots, test beds and case studies. All of these WPs are bridged in the sixth WP by interoperability within ERA-PLANET and GEOSS. The last seventh WP is focused on project dissemination, communication and other similar activities.

Based on the SMURBS internal structure the key steps consist of: (i) mapping what is out there and understand what the user want, (ii) design, implement and create synergies among EO platforms accordingly, to cover these needs (iii) create a portfolio of Smart Urban Solutions with the SMURBS products, services and tools (iv) deploy solutions in pilot cities, test, fine-tune the portfolio.

The resulting solutions are based on the exploitation and synergy of different Earth Observation products, including satellites, in situ monitoring, smart sensors, and air quality modeling from European to city-scale.

Currently available deliverables/outcomes of SMURBS project can be accessed on: deliverables – Smurbs. And portfolio of SMURBS project tools, solutions and approaches can be accessed on: Portfolio of SMart URBan Solutions (smurbs.eu).

Masaryk University (RECETOX) is featured in SMURBS project as coordinator/leader of health-related aspects of urban pressures. Associate professor Pave Čupr, Ph.D. is the principal investigator. URBAN_AQ:Health is the featured approach with possible tandem with health risk assessment tool AirQ+.