Pollutants in the Urban Environment (PUrE)

The Pollutants in the Urban Environment consortium (PUrE) celebrates the completion of four year’s research this week with its final event in Fitzroy Square, London. The PUrE consortium, led by the University of Manchester, involving six UK academic partners and 17 other partners from industry and government organisations in the UK and Europe, has created an innovative sustainability assessment software that enables more sustainable management of urban pollution.

The all-in-one sustainability assessment software estimates environmental and health impacts as well as the socio-economic costs of different products, technologies and activities in order to help identify more sustainable options.
The unique software comprises a combination of pre-existing sustainability modelling tools to enable a fully integrated sustainability assessment. This five-pronged approach comprises a suite of models and tools including life cycle assessment, substance flow analysis, pollutant fate and transport modelling, ecological and health impact assessment and Multi-Criteria Decision analysis.

The main novelty and innovation of the PUrE software is that it integrates these different models and tools in a seamless manner, enabling the user to carry out an integrated sustainability assessment within a single framework. However, since the software platform is modular, it is also possible to use only those tools that are of interest to the user, depending on the sustainability question being asked and the problem being addressed. During a sustainability assessment, the user is guided through a three step process: Problem Structuring, Problem analysis and Problem resolution.

The added value of the software is in its integrated multi-criteria assessment of sustainability, involving all three dimensions of sustainability: environmental, economic and social. The framework is designed for a range of different groups of users, including industry, government, local authorities, NGOs and researchers.

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