Britter, R., 2015. The rise of low cost sensing for managing air pollution in cities. Environment International 75,[199][200][201][202][203][204][205]. Online link: http://dx

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Polymer composites reinforced by hydrophilic clay aerogels were produced and found to possess interpenetrating cocontinuous structures, not the exfoliated structure often observed in clay nanocomposites. An efficient process for producing these clay aerogels was recently reported; in-situ polymerization of N-isopropylacrylamide within the clay aerogels was readily accomplished. The resulting composites have low densities, are stable, and exhibit a new synergistic effect of interpenetrating organic−inorganic phases in which the organic polymer prevents loss of aerogel structure in water by encapsulation, while the inorganic filler increases the structural integrity of the polymer. The composites undergo phase transition and show LCST behavior similar to unmodified poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) despite the presence of reinforcing clay aerogels. Reversible changes in morphology of the aerogel hydrogel composites are observed with varying degrees of hydration.

a b s t r a c tThis paper describes the development of a model for assessing TRAffic Noise EXposure (TRANEX) in an open-source geographic information system. Instead of using proprietary software we developed our own model for two main reasons: 1) so that the treatment of source geometry, traffic information (flows/ speeds/spatially varying diurnal traffic profiles) and receptors matched as closely as possible to that of the air pollution modelling being undertaken in the TRAFFIC project, and 2) to optimize model performance for practical reasons of needing to implement a noise model with detailed source geometry, over a large geographical area, to produce noise estimates at up to several million address locations, with limited computing resources. To evaluate TRANEX, noise estimates were compared with noise measurements made in the British cities of Leicester and Norwich. High correlation was seen between modelled and measured L Aeq,1hr (Norwich: r ¼ 0.85, p ¼ .000; Leicester: r ¼ 0.95, p ¼ .000) with average model errors of 3.1 dB. TRANEX was used to estimate noise exposures (L Aeq,1hr , L Aeq,16hr , L night ) for the resident population of London (2003e2010). Results suggest that 1.03 million (12%) people are exposed to daytime road traffic noise levels ! 65 dB(A) and 1.63 million (19%) people are exposed to night-time road traffic noise levels ! 55 dB(A). Differences in noise levels between 2010 and 2003 were on average relatively small: 0.25 dB (standard deviation: 0.89) and 0.26 dB (standard deviation: 0.87) for L Aeq,16hr and L night .

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