Institutional portal - Municipality of Milan

Councilor Grandi: "A widespread network that will allow us to identify strategies and intervention actions aimed at the specific needs of each individual neighborhood" 

Milan, February 27 2022 – The Municipality of Milan starts the creation of its own network of mobile control units for monitoring air quality. Thanks to the collaboration with AMAT, the first five control stations based on an innovative 'highly reliable' advanced sensor model have been installed in recent days. The new network will allow the Municipality of Milan to have a precise snapshot of the state of health of the air on a micro-scale, neighborhood by neighborhood, place by place. 
  
“We are creating a network of control units that will allow us to monitor and quantify the effects of the actions and choices made by the Administration – explains Environment and Green Councilor Elena Grandi -. We will thus have an additional tool that will allow us to identify the most suitable interventions to implement to mitigate the effects of air pollution based on the specific needs of each individual neighborhood starting from the most sensitive areas such as schools. We have a duty to guarantee all citizens, especially the little ones, a city with better air". 
 
The five mobile stations work alongside and integrate the information from the five institutional stations of Arpa Lombardia, thus leading to a total of ten measurement points across the entire municipal territory. Although the data collected by the new municipal network has no value for regulatory purposes, it will constitute a very useful source of information on a micro-scale for understanding the environmental aspects of the territory, characterizing the exposure of the population, which is essential for then developing strategies and actions. of "side specific" mitigation and related monitoring, as required by the Air-Climate Plan just approved by the City Council. 
 
To date, three of the five new mobile stations positioned by AMAT are undergoing a period of alignment with the stations of the institutional network of Arpa Lombardia, while two are in the testing phase. 
 
The creation of the monitoring network is aimed at collecting data and information on air quality in 'sensitive areas' such as schools of all levels, hospitals, nursing homes, youth centres, sports centres, which will also be accompanied by measurements , even indoors, precisely to have a precise snapshot of the air breathed by the residents and users of the neighborhood. 
 
Furthermore, thanks to the intervention of Bloomberg Philantrophies, from the summer of this year, the Municipality of Milan will have a further 30 monitoring tools which will allow it to reach a total of 40 measurement points in the municipal territory, concentrated above all in schools . In elementary schools, in particular, an environmental education module will also be activated in collaboration with specialized partners. 
 
Once the measurement phase and the subsequent collection of data have started, which can only be shared after the processing program has been implemented in a system, mitigation interventions will be started as envisaged by the PAC, from the creation of new smog-eating green areas ' to more structural interventions.