Introducing the Green Infrastructure for Roadside Air Quality (GI4RAQ) Platform: Estimating Site-Specific Changes in the Dispersion of Vehicular Pollution Close to Source

The benefits of ‘green infrastructure’ are multi-faceted and well-documented, but estimating those individual street-scale planting schemes at planning can be challenging. This is crucial to avoid undervaluing proposed in cost–benefit analyses, ensure they resilient ‘value engineering’ between implementation. Here, we introduce prototype software enabling urban practitioners estimate the site-specific air quality impacts roadside vegetation barriers: highly localised changes pollutant concentrations due dispersion vehicular emissions close source. We summarise recent shift understanding regarding on pollution towards (cf. deposition) describe our software, offering rapid estimates thereof. First tests underlying model’s performance promising, reproducing: annual mean NO2 PM2.5 a street canyon (Marylebone Road, London, UK) within 10% 25%, respectively; right order magnitude behind barriers wind tunnel simulation real open-road environment. However, model underestimates barrier simulated under perpendicular conditions. first step informing barriers, which should always additional (i.e., no substitute for) essential emission reductions. code open-source engage further researchers its continued development.