Publications

Each year, pollution claims and affects hundreds of thousands of lives across Europe. Even as air pollution levels continue to decline, it is still expected to cause around 200,000 premature deaths every year across the EU in the coming decade.  Europe’s freshwater and soils are also under significant pressure from pollution and climate change, presenting current and future challenges to water security and ecosystems’ resilience with direct effects on human health. Furthermore, over 30% of Europe’s population lives in areas where noise levels are harmful to health.

Exposure to pollution is higher in urban areas, and the impacts on human health are more severe. City administrations often need to balance multiple and uncertain effects of pollution management amid limited resources.

Through PUREPOLIS, the Horizon Europe programme is equipping policymakers with data and citizen insights to drive cleaner, healthier cities. With a budget of 4.937.518,00€, the project will launch in January 2026 and will bring together 19 partners from around Europe will work together over 3 years to develop strategies for management of urban air, water, soil, and noise pollution.

Quote from coordinator

“With PUREPOLIS, we aim to equip cities with the knowledge and tools they need to make informed, science-based decisions for cleaner and healthier urban environments,” says Dr. Alexandra Schneider, Deputy Director of the Institute of Epidemiology and Head of the Research Group Environmental Risks at Helmholtz Munich, who leads the PUREPOLIS project. “By connecting data, innovation, and citizens’ perspectives, we can make pollution management more effective, inclusive, and equitable across Europe.”

Introducing PUREPOLIS

Funded under the EU Mission on Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities, PUREPOLIS aims to create dynamic abatement strategies (DAS) specifically designed to empower city administrations to make impactful decisions in managing pollution. These strategies will be transferrable, scalable and replicable across Europe’s urban contexts, leveraging and relying on existing city networks.

Beyond core cities of Nantes in France and Valencia in Spain, the project involves three follower cities – Berlin, Rybnik, and Augsburg – whose role will be to evaluate the transferability of the project’s results. PUREPOLIS is an unprecedented step forward for healthier, more resilient cities. By fusing science, digital innovation, and citizen-driven action, PUREPOLIS aims to set a new gold standard for pollution mitigation in Europe. The project will deliver:

• • improvements in methods for assessing exposure to air, water, soil & noise pollution, particularly of vulnerable groups.
  • accelerated uptake and innovation on shared, smart and sustainable zero emission solutions by local and regional administrations.
  • increased deployment of solutions involving urban greening, renaturing, reducing soil sealing, green/blue infrastructures, nature-based solutions and ecosystem-based approaches to climate mitigation and adaptation.

The Consortium

The PUREPOLIS consortium is coordinated by Helmholtz Munich, a leading biomedical research center with a focus on environmentally triggered diseases, especially the therapy and prevention of diabetes, obesity, allergies, and chronic lung diseases.

The consortium brings together 5 academic and scientific partners from different EU countries: University of Twente (the Netherlands) connects technology and engineering with social sciences; UMIT Tirol (Austria) specialises in new vocational fields and research areas, responding to latest challenges in health care and technology. LUT University (Finland) promotes energy transition and regenerative use of natural resources, helping to build resilient communities, industries, and businesses. University of Augsburg (Germany) has expanded into promising fields in the natural and technical sciences and medicine. Universidade de Vigo (Spain) promotes and coordinates scientific, technical, and humanistic research.

6 technological partners, centres, institutes, companies, and agencies from 4 EU countries, add value to the project: Leitat (Spain) focuses its activity on research, development and industrial innovation. UNINOVA (Portugal) pursues excellence in scientific research, and technical development. Tree Technology (Spain) is an R&D company providing information and communication technology solutions based on Big Data and Artificial Intelligence. Substitute ApS (Denmark) develops methods, data, and tools for assessing and reducing impacts of chemical, material, product and technology life cycles on human health and biodiversity. UrbanThink (France) democratises access to climate information. Euroquality (France) supports technological and methodological innovation within SME and companies.

3 public authorities are involved in PUREPOLIS: Nantes Métropole (France) is one of the two core case studies. Valencia Innovation Capital (Spain) is an initiative of the Innovation Department of the Valencia City Council, working towards a sustainable and technologically advanced future for the city of Valencia, which is the other core case study. Rybnik (Poland) is one of the three follower-cities whose role will be to evaluate the transferability of the project’s results.

2 civil society organisations are members of the consortium: the European Public Health Alliance (Belgium) is an international not-for-profit association advocating for the protection and improvement of public health in Europe. Healthy Cities (Spain) shapes the built environment to help people live healthier lives.

2 environmental and monitoring agencies support the project in different ways: Air Pays de la Loire (France) ensures monitoring and information on air quality in the region. Acoucité (France) is a sound observatory, used as a management and decision aid tool for elected representatives.

Contact

For any inquiries, please contact Mladen Hadžić at mladen.hadzic@epha.org or Verena Coscia at verena.coscia@helmholtz-munich.de.