How AI is helping cities tackle invisible pollution

In cities, air pollution can vary sharply from one street to the next. Fumes may linger between tall buildings, collect at busy junctions or drift towards a school gate. However, cities often lack the detailed forecasts needed to act before levels become dangerous. For Professor Soledad Le Clainche, an applied mathematician at the Technical University of Madrid and leader of the ModelFLOWs research group, better understanding how air moves through cities could help tackle one of Europe's biggest environmental health challenges. As part of an EU-funded research project called MODELAIR, Le Clainche is working with researchers in Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK to make the invisible, highly local patterns of urban pollution easier for cities to understand.