LENS

LENS brings together a multidisciplinary group of 15 partners from 10 different EU Member States. Its aim? To develop and promote best practices to solve the problem of noise and emissions by improving the performance of future vehicles and minimising the impact of existing vehicles. 

The growth of traffic and urban development increases noise and air pollution exposure. This affects health and quality of life. LENS (L-vehicles Emissions and Noise mitigation Solutions) aims to assist law enforcement, cities, and regulatory authorities to reduce the contribution of L-category vehicles – LVs (mopeds, motorcycles, tricycles, and quadri-mobiles) to noise and air pollution.  

The project seeks to examine emissions of greenhouse gases, including CO2, and health-relevant pollutants, including very small particles, from LVs to meet the 2030 Agenda goals and enhance the liveability of urban and rural neighbourhoods  LENS works on developing and promoting interventions and best practices to solve the problem of noise and emissions, suggesting solutions to improve the performance of future vehicles and minimise the impact of existing vehicles. 

The project will apply techniques to monitor noise nuisance and emissions of LVs, provide recommendations on how to control the contribution of current and future LVs, examine emissions and noise performance under real driving conditions and deploy methods to identify tampered vehicles. The research results will provide information on different policy options for regulators, cities and authorities, including the improvement of test procedures for type approval (TA).

POLIS members Leuven and Paris, as well as the city of Florence, have been preliminarily selected as field survey and vehicle specifications locations but this does not preclude selecting other locations in the course of LENS. The project has cooperated and built upon the City Air Remote Emissions Sensing (CARES) project, during which remote sensing measurements were conducted in the POLIS member cities of Milan and Prague in 2021 and 2022.

LENS brings together a multidisciplinary group of 15 partners from 10 different EU Member States, led by EMISIA. POLIS is leading the communication, dissemination, and exploitation activities to build momentum for more city-friendly LVs in terms of noise and emissions. The goal, amongst others, is to promote knowledge transfer, conduct capacity-building activities, involve a wider base of external cities and regions and, ultimately, turn the project’s actions into concrete value and impact for the EU market & society.

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