Air pollution control strategies for Chinese cities with co-benefits for climate (GAINS-City)

By linking tools developed by Chinese researchers with IIASA’s GAINS model, the project connects data about urban air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions to allow Chinese officials to develop clean air policies for Chinese mega-cities that also lead to lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Increasing economic activity in China could cause that country’s chronic air quality problems to worsen and escalate the threat to both human health and crop production. China has been attempting to improve urban air quality and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but the two efforts are rarely connected.

The GAINS-City project adapted the the GAINS model to the specific needs of urban planners in order to assess practical policy options for controlling urban air pollution that maximize at the same time co-benefits on greenhouse gas mitigation.

The project has brought IIASA researchers together with scientists from the Center for Earth System Science at Tsinghua University in Beijing to develop an interface between their modeling tools in order to analyze how best to link air pollution control methods with greenhouse mitigation programs. The Tsinghua researchers bottom-up planing tool” that provides data from two Chinese mega-cities with IIASA’s GAINS-City model.

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Last edited: 31 August 2012