The action plans for air quality of the Lombardy Region (PRIA), of Emilia-Romagna in Italy, of Alsace in France, of Porto, Portugal, and Brussels, Belgium, make use the RIAT+ (Regional Impact Assessment Tool) software developed within the framework of the two European projects OPERA and APPPRAISAL, in which DEIB collaborated with various national and international partners. RIAT+ is a user-friendly, but sophisticated calculation tool that enables environmental agencies to quickly experiment with alternative plans for reducing emissions to identify the most effective technologies to be implemented. This result is obtained through the use of neural networks that replicate the results of general transport and diffusion models in each region. They represent with an acceptable accuracy the complex of physico-chemical nonlinear reactions that determine the presence of secondary pollutants (particulate and ozone), but which, due to their complexity, do not allow for the experimentation of the consequences of alternative emissive plans in the time frame needed to support decisions.
The application to Alsace Region, for instance, showed that the sectors to be first addressed to reduce nitrogen oxides pollution are non-traffic mobile sources (i.e. airplanes, agricultural machinery,…) and combustion in energy and transformation industries. With an annual investment of about 11 M€, it would be possible to reduce the average yearly concentration in the most sensitive areas of the region of 11%.