Events

We host a variety of network events, seminars and workshops. See below for our upcoming and previous events. We have recordings of all past events on our YouTube channel.

Spring Seminar Series

5th March 2024 12:00-13:00 – Dr Chris Iddon. Uncertainties in airborne COVID-19 transmission: Why they matter when considering ventilation to reduce risk. An exploration of models used to predict COVID-19 transmission risk in indoor scenarios and how uncertainties affect the confidence in the results. Modelling populations of scenarios provides a framework for establishing transmission risk at a population level. Using data from real monitored night-life scenarios and these models, we are able to assess the impact of ventilation on risk reduction. Watch on YouTube

19th March 2024 12:00-13:00 – Dr Carolanne Vouriot –Investigating the validity of CO₂ point measurement in naturally ventilated classrooms with CFD. An idealised UK classroom is simulated using Computational Fluid Dynamics. The ventilation is buoyancy driven through high- and low-level vents and the spatial distribution of CO₂ is studied under different ventilation provisions. Focus is drawn on how the variations in CO₂ concentration impact predictions of the ventilation rate and exposure to infected breath. Watch on YouTube.

Webinar: Ventilation Guidance for Small Businesses

On Wednesday 4th October Dr Abigail Hathway lead a webinar to disseminate recently developed ventilation guidance for small businesses to environmental health teams across the U.K. Watch on YouTube.

The guidance was developed from research with small business owners to understand both technical and behavioural challenges to improving ventilation and can be found here:

https://forms.gle/FyxwFeWtMm8Wx9TBA

Over 120 people virtually attended the webinar with attendees from across the breadth of the U.K. We had fantastic engagement from attendees and encourage environmental health professionals that were unable to attend to watch the youtube video.

In addition to Dr Abigail Hathway’s talk on the guidance we also had Professor Cath Noakes explain the concept of the ‘Indoor Air Quality Observatory’ (Watch on YouTube) and questionnaire here:  https://forms.office.com/e/QGPVMHxy2M). The Indoor Air Quality Observatory has a long term aim to establish a national network of indoor air quality sensors to determine air quality in buildings using low cost, networked sensors to establish the potential extent and effect of poor indoor air quality on human health.

The ventilation guidance was funded and supported by the following:

The PROTECT COVID-19 National Core Study on transmission and environment, managed by the Health and Safety Executive on behalf of HM Government.

– Sheffield City Council

– COVID-19 Recovery Knowledge Exchange grant from the Higher Education Innovation fund, managed by the University of Sheffield

– Dissemination was supported by the Future Urban Ventilation Network (NERC grant reference : NE/V002082/1) which is part of the UKRI Strategic Priorities Fund’s Clean Air Programme.

Autumn/Winter Seminar Series

03/10/2023 12.00-13.00 Lauren Ferguson Healthy Buildings team at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, formally Bartlett School Environment, Energy & Resources, Faculty of the Built Environment, University College London.  Areas of expertise: how climate and the built environment may affect population health and the implications for health inequalities, incorporating qualitative measures of population characteristics into quantitative building-physics and statistical models. Watch on YouTube

17/10/2023 12.00-13.00 Dr Amber Yeoman – Department of Chemistry, University of York. Areas of expertise: source of indoor volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and solvents, Selected-Ion Flow-Tube Mass Spectrometry (SIFT-MS), Quadrupole-Time of Flight Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry (Q-TOF GC/MS), and inhalation risks. Consumer Product VOCs – Understanding the emissions impacting indoor air quality Watch on YouTube

31/10/2023 12.00-13.00 Dr Andrew Timmis Lecturer in Transport. Loughborough University. School of Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering. Challenges of Including Indoor Air Quality in Life Cycle Assessment Methodology. Watch on YouTube

14/11/2023 12.00-13.00 Dr Lorenza Pistore – Project Manager R2M solution. Regenerative indoor environments: how can we characterize and evaluate them? Towards a carbon-neutral society that accounts for the co-evolvement of human and natural ecosystems. Watch on YouTube

28/11/2023 12.00-13.00 – Sandy Jones PhD research University of Plymouth. Investigating the association between construction, indoor air quality and health in the UK. Also Environmental Health Officer. “Improvement and enforcement of housing standards in the private sector using the Housing Act 2004 and the HHSRS.” Watch on YouTube

2023 Clean Air Networks Conference

The 2023 Clean Air Networks Conference, held at the University of Birmingham 5-6 July 2023, will showcase the networks’ wide ranging activities and identify, as a legacy for the UK Clean Air community, the next steps for both indoor and outdoor air quality research and policy. It is hosted by seven networks funded under the UK Clean Air Strategic Priority Fund, the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) Air Quality Network and the UKRI Clean Air Champions.

Find out more here

Spring-Summer 2023 Seminar Series

25/04/2023 12.00-13.00 Dr Emily Nix. Research fellow, Institute of Population Health, University of Liverpool. “Healthy Indoor Air in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Contending with Poor Housing, Polluting Energy Use, and Outdoor Pollution”. Areas of expertise: the interactions between housing, health and sustainability in low and middle-income countries. Cancelled due to illness

09/05/2023 12.00-13.00 Simon Jones, Head of Air Quality, Ambisense Ltd. “Digitisation of the built environment and the “what next” question”. Watch on YouTube

23/05/2023 12.00-13.00 Dr. Abhishek Tiwary Associate Professor of Environmental Engineering and Pollution Control Technology, School of Engineering and Sustainable Development, De Montfort University. “The combined challenge of heating and cleaning the indoor space: thinking what’s outside the box”. Areas of expertise: heating and movement of IAQ particulates and VOCs. Watch on YouTube

06/06/2023 12.00-13.00 Dr Emily Nix. Research fellow, Institute of Population Health, University of Liverpool. “Healthy Indoor Air in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Contending with Poor Housing, Polluting Energy Use, and Outdoor Pollution”. Areas of expertise: the interactions between housing, health and sustainability in low and middle-income countries.

Autumn-Winter 2022-23 Seminar Series

04/10/2022 12.00-13.00 Peter Bedwell. UKHSA Environmental Radiological Assessment Services “Sheltering: a key protective action in reducing exposure following a radiation accident”. Watch on YouTube

18/10/2022 12.00-13.00 Dr. Omduth Coceal. Senior Research Scientist at University of Reading. “From random walks to stochastic dispersion in street networks”. Not recorded as unpublished data was presented.

31/10/2022 12.00-13.00 Dr. Anna Mavrogianni Associate Professor at the Bartlett School Env, Energy & Resources, Faculty of the Built Environment, University College London. “Indoor environmental quality, energy efficiency, climate resilience and educational outcomes: a school building stock modelling framework”. Watch again on YouTube

15/11/2022 12.00-13.00 Prof. Lucie Middlemiss Professor of Environment and Society, University of Leeds. “Energy poverty, the energy crisis and mould”. Areas of expertise: sustainable consumption; energy poverty; sustainable community. Watch again on YouTube

29/11/2022 12.00-13.00 Prof. Alison Tomlin, University of Leeds. Head of the Clean Combustion Research Group. “Possible impacts of low carbon heating strategies on indoor and outdoor air quality”. Watch again on YouTube.

07/02/2023 12.00-13.00 – Dr. Cristina Rodriguez Rivero University of Cambridge, and Sara Mohamed. University of Strathclyde. “Air quality in prisons and in other, perhaps under-represented, settings.”

24/02/2023 12.00-13.00 – Nathan Wood. Managing Director at Farmwood Mechanical and Electrical Services Ltd. “Ventilation – The Cinderella Industry”. Watch on YouTube.

07/03/2023 12.00-13.00 – Dr. Matteo Carpentieri. Senior Lecturer in Environmental Fluid Mechanics. University of Surrey. Areas of expertise: wind tunnel modelling of urban and atmospheric flows, and associated processes (dispersion and micro-climate). “Wind tunnel modelling of urban aerodynamics and air pollution”. Watch on YouTube

21/03/2023 12.00-13.00 – Dr. Abhishek Tiwary Associate Professor of Environmental Engineering and Pollution Control Technology, School of Engineering and Sustainable Development, De Montfort University. Areas of expertise: heating and movement of IAQ particulates and VOCs. POSTPONED

World Ventil8 Day – Breathing City Celebrate Ventilate!

FUVN hosted a special World Ventil8 Day event to celebrate unique or unusual ventilation projects and the people behind them. We discussed integrated ‘smart’ building controls, the internet of things, ventilation and thermal comfort, using natural and hybrid ventilation, shared info on new and exciting experimental facilities and heard about how ventilation played a key role in getting venues back up and running during the Covid-19 pandemic. Our panel speakers included:

  • Andy Acred (Foster+Partners) – sharing novel ventilation strategies used in F+P projects.
  • Filipa Adzic. High-resolution CO2 monitoring at live theatre events to assess ventilation and mitigate airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2
  • Ben Roberts (University of Loughborough) – speaking about the AIRBODS project and a case study of ventilation strategies in Ghanaian hospitals.
  • Liora Malki-Epshtein (University College London) – sharing some highlights from the CAVE facility.

A recording of the event is available here

Visit the official website for more info about World Ventilation Day www.worldventil8day.com

Understanding indoor air quality for healthy buildings in a net zero world

Wed, 28 September 2022 10.00 – 17.00 BST (White City Campus, Imperial College London)

Earlier this year, members of the TAPAS network, the FUVN network, the CSTB and the OQAI met to discuss national indoor air quality strategies in France and the UK. The meeting of these four initiatives, together with invited experts from academia, industry and government science organisations, focused on “observing indoor air” – how we can develop coordinated approaches to capturing data on indoor air quality at scale and over long periods of time and how this can be used to understand health effects and support policy and practice.

This follow-on event will showcased the latest studies from early career researchers on indoor air quality for healthy buildings with a consideration of the international net zero targets.

This event was hosted by Breathing City (FUVN), TAPAS and ICP-ERG. the talks were not recorded but many of the speakers were able to share their slides which you can access via the links below.

  • Dr. Liora Malki-Epshtein: Rapid IAQ monitoring at large scale events: lessons from the Events Research Programme. Slides here
  • Abigaël Souillier: On-site characterization method for emerging semi-volatile compounds emitted by materials – Application to the identification of emissions from recycled materials. Slides here
  • Dr. Evangelia Chatzidiakou: Developing a novel methodological framework for estimating school-based exposure in health and modelling studies Slides here
  • Klaas De Jonge: Time-resolved DALY for instantaneous IAQ health assessment. Slides not available to the public
  • Dr. Emily Kruger: A study of the ventilation on an inter-city train carriage. Slides here
  • Dr. Corrine Mandin: Indoor air quality: rising issues and future challenges. Slides here
  • Dr. Stavros Bontitsopoulos: Evidencing the effects of HEPA filters in naturally ventilated classrooms. (Presented by Dr. Henry Burridge). Slides here
  • Sara Mohamed: Monitoring carbon dioxide as an approach to managing ventilation to mitigate COVID-19 in prisons setting. Slides not available to the public
  • Luiz Miranda: Micro-sensors for indoor air quality: from deployment to data treatment. Slides here
  • Sophie Pott: Technical and Behavioural Challenges to Ventilation in Hospitality Venues. Slides here

Understanding air quality for health in different environments

Thu, 22 September 2022 11:30 – 17:30 BST (online and in-person in Leeds)

This half day event explored indoor air quality for health with a particular focus on “Understanding AQ for health in different environments” – discussing the challenges of measuring air quality and ventilation and relating this to health parameters.

We brought together a range of speakers including:

  • Prof. Chris Whitty (pre-recorded): AQ and health; challenges and needs. Presentation recording here
  • Dr. David Fishwick: The Lungs at Work; formidable yet fragile. Recording and slides not available to the public
  • Dr. Miranda Loh: Healthy Air for Workplaces (slides) (recording)
  • Cairan Van Rooyen: Public ventilation surveys. Recording and slides not available to the public
  • Dr. Abigail Hathway: Measuring ventilation rates in hospitality venues (slides) (recording)
  • Jenny Carrington: Healthy building design (slides) (recording)

We also heard about four pilot studies funded by the Future Urban Ventilation Network:

Recordings of all four talks are available on our YouTube channel

  • Dr. Marco Felipe King: Not every air quality measurement should be treated the same: standardising visuals (slides)
  • Dr. Monica Mateo-Garcia: Impact of different building standards on indoor air quality in homes (slides)
  • Dr. Hong Yang: Ventilation, indoor air quality and people health in care homes (recording)
  • Dr. Jonathan Higham: Real-time residential monitoring of children with suspected pollution related respiratory diseases (slides)

2022 Spring/Summer Seminar Series

10/05/2022 12.00-13.00 BST. Dr. Ian Clifton. Consultant Physician in Respiratory Medicine and Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Leeds. ‘You are what you breathe – air quality and lung health’. Watch again on YouTube.

24/05/2022 12.00-13.00 BST. Dr. Tim Foat. Principal Investigator at Defence Science and Technology Laboratory Dstl. ‘Indoor dispersion at Dstl and its recent application to COVID-19 transmission’. Watch again on YouTube

07/06/2022 12.00-13.00 BST. Dr. Omduth Coceal. Research Fellow at University of Reading. Urban flow and dispersion modelling, spanning building-resolving, neighborhood and urban boundary layer scales. *POSTPONED TO OCTOBER*

21/06/2022 12.00-13.00 BST. Dr. Sarah West. Centre Director and Senior Research Associate in the Stockholm Environment Institute at the University of York. Citizen science approaches applied to air quality projects and beyond. Watch again on YouTube

05/07/2022 12.00-13.00 BST. Dr. Christina Vanderwel. Associate Professor and UKRI Future Leaders Fellow in the Aerodynamics and Astronautics Department at the University of Southampton. ‘Scale model experiments of urban aerodynamics and air pollution’. Watch again on YouTube

Career Paths in Air Quality

Friday 1 July 2022. 09:30 – 13:00 BST. Watch on YouTube

This is an event for early career researchers and professionals who work in air quality to share their projects, discover opportunities to collaborate, and find out more about career paths in air quality.

The half day event will open with a talk from Prof. Cath Noakes who will be highlighting some of the big-picture indoor/outdoor air quality challenges over the next 20 years. This will be followed by presentations from early career researchers in academia, the public sector, and industry, showcasing their work on both indoor and outdoor air quality.

Speakers include:

The talks will be followed by a panel discussion where early career professionals can put forward their questions to a panel of air quality experts.

The panel includes:

There will also be short breaks and opportunities to network online. The event is run jointly by the Institute of Air Quality Management and the Future Urban Ventilation Network.

Air Quality, Buildings & Materials: Challenges and Solutions

Thursday 24 March 2022. 11.30 – 12.30

Breathing City and the STFC Air Quality Network hosted an online networking session to share ideas around the theme of ‘Air Quality, Buildings and Materials’. The session was aimed at anyone with an interest in air quality who would like to make interdisciplinary connections with others in the community.

Prof Tom Woolley, chair of the UKRI SPF Clean Air Programme, gave an overview of the topic, and shared key research gaps, data needs and measurement challenges. We also had a series of lightning presentations from other participants, which highlighted some research, presented further questions or shared some recent work. After the presentations, we moved to Wonder, an online platform, for free-flowing networking and discussion of the topic.

2021/2 Autumn/Winter Seminar Series

02/11/2021 12.00-13.00 GMT. Alan Clarke and Kate de Selincourt, writer and editor in the environment, sustainable building, and energy “Retrofitting MVHR – rationale, practicalities and results”. Watch again on YouTube

16/11/2021 12.00-13.00 GMT. Justine Raoult, Aether Ltd. supporting international emissions inventory projects and working with the Chair of the UN/ECE’s Taskforce on Emission Inventories and Projections. “Outdoor emissions inventories and their role in source apportionment and policy formation”. Watch again on YouTube

30/11/2021 12.00-13.00 GMT. Paul Agnew, manager of the Air Quality and Composition team at the Met Office. “An overview of Met Office air quality modelling developments”. Watch again on YouTube

14/12/2021 12.00-13.00 GMT. Ben Fenech, Group Leader in Noise and Public Health at Public Health England and Cairan Van Rooyen Doctoral Researcher in the Physical Characterisation of Buildings Group at UCL Energy Institute The Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources. “Integrating sound and noise into indoor environmental quality research”. Watch again on YouTube

26/01/2022 (*Wednesday*) 12.00-13.00 GMT Dr. Abigail Hathway. Senior Lecturer Department of Civil and Structural Engineering University of Sheffield. “Ventilation in the real world: ventilation performance and role of people and controls”. Watch again on YouTube

08/02/2022 12.00-13.00 GMT Dr. Jessica Few. Research Fellow in the UCL Energy Institute. ‘Ventilation in occupied homes: measurement and sociotechnical perspectives’. Watch again on YouTube

22/02/2022  12.00-13.00 GMT Dr. Christos Halios. ‘Integrating mass balance and experimental approaches: Indoor Air Quality applications’ UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), (formerly Public Health England). Watch again on YouTube.

08/03/2022 12.00-13.00 GMT Dr. Ben Jones. Associate Professor at the University of Nottingham Department of Architecture and Built Environment. “The New Paradigm of IAQ: Quantifying the health impacts of exposure to common contaminants found in indoor air.” Watch again on YouTube

Metrics for Indoor and Outdoor Air Quality

Wednesday 22nd September 2021. 09.30 – 12.30

Watch again on YouTube

Outdoor air quality in the UK is often measured with the Air Quality Index. Some of the metrics used to measure indoor air quality are relative humidity, particulate matter concentration, volatile organic matter concentration, and exposure limits.  However, there is no agreed universal metric. Understanding these metrics in different indoor environments will help to monitor and improve indoor air quality.

This half day event, hosted by Breathing City (the Clean Air Fund’s Future Urban Ventilation Network), showcases the latest research and strategies associated with air quality metrics. Both the indoor and outdoor environments are discussed by a range of experts in behavioural science, metrology, atmospheric chemistry, public health and environmental exposure.

Speakers:

Click on the title to access the slides. The talks are followed by a panel discussion and feedback activity.

This event is suitable for researchers, public health practitioners and professionals with an interest in air quality.

Perspectives on ventilation and air quality modelling

Tuesday 14th September 2021. 10.00-15.00

Watch again on YouTube

We are developing a technical framework to enable a new integrated health evidenced approach to urban building design and technology innovation. Theme one of our network, focuses on mechanisms for ingress and egress of pollutants in buildings and the tools and techniques for quantifying this exchange. Theme one leads, Malcolm Cook and Maarten van Reeuwijk are hosting an online workshop to identify how mathematical models are used currently by building stakeholders, to explore stakeholder needs in terms of ventilation and air quality, to explore reality versus modelling and to identify opportunities from emerging technologies.

Invited presentations from different stakeholders in this area:

Breakout groups discuss topics to include multiple-stakeholder design; what models do different stakeholders require; what data do we need?; active/passive ventilation; and urban planning

Clean Air Day

Thursday 17th June, 2021 12:00 – 13:00  

Watch again on YouTube

As part of Clean Air Day 2021, we hosted an event around engaging and involving the wider public in clean air research. Along with our partner networks, we asked how the research community can ‘translate’ air quality science into messaging, media stories and social media campaigns that cut through to the public, and enable them to join the conversation.

Clean Air Day is focused on improving public understanding of air pollution and building awareness of how air pollution impacts our health. This event is organised jointly by the the six SPF-Clean Air funded air quality networks. The event was hosted by Prof Cath Noakes, Professor of Environmental Engineering for Buildings at the University of Leeds. Speakers were as follows:

  • Charlotte Zamboni, Marketing Director, Global Action Plan: Playing on the positive  – Turning clean air research into compelling communications
  • Lukasz Walasek, University of Warwick: How do we turn communications into action? Insights from behavioural science.
  • Mike Morrison, Michigan State University: How to ‘speed up’ science and make it bitesize and user friendly.

2021 Spring Summer Seminar Series:

13/04/2021 12.00-13.00 BST. Jim Stewart Evans. Principal Environmental Public Health Scientist at Public Health England. Talk title “Characterising environmental hazards to health: outdoor and indoor exposures”. Watch again on YouTube

27/04/2021 12.00-13.00 BST. Dr. Maarten van Reeuwijk. Reader in the Fluid Mechanics section in the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Imperial College. Talk title “Understanding personal exposure in outdoor environments using large-eddy simulation”. Watch again on YouTube

11/05/2021 12.00-13.00 BST. Dr. Megan Davies Wykes. Lecturer in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge. Talk title “Models for natural ventilation: sash windows and cross-ventilation”. Watch again on YouTube

25/05/2021 12.00-13.00 BST. Prof. Nicola Carslaw. Professor in Indoor Air Chemistry Department of Environment and Geography at the University of York. Talk title “‘Indoor air pollution: should we be worried?”. Watch again on YouTube

08/06/2021 12.00-13.00 BST. Dr Jim McQuaid and Dr. Kirsty Pringle. School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds. Talk title “BiB Breathes: Measuring Children in Bradford’s Exposure to Air Pollution” [Jim McQuaid: BiB Breathes: Project design and the Bradford Clean Air Zone, Kirsty Pringle: BiB Breathes: Sensors, testing and school engagement]. Watch again on YouTube

22/06/2021 13.00-14.00 BST. Professor John Thornes. Public Health England Principal Climate Change Scientist and Emeritus Professor of Applied Meteorology at the University of Birmingham. Talk title “Intervention of Upgraded Ventilation System to Reduce Noxious Air Quality at Birmingham New Street Railway Station”. Watch again on YouTube

06/07/2021 12.00-13.00 BST. Jenny Brierley PhD Researcher in the School of Architecture at the University of Sheffield. Talk title “Zero-carbon and breathable homes – is there a missing link?” Watch again on YouTube

Launch Event

On Monday 18th January 2021, the Future Urban Ventilation Network hosted a launch event online. Professor Cath Noakes (PI) provided an overview of the project (slides here) and four air quality experts delivered fantastic presentations.  

You can view these talks again on our YouTube channel, or click on the title to download the slides:

The afternoon provided more information about the project themes: ‘Coupled indoor-outdoor environments‘; ‘Health-centred ventilation design‘, and ‘Breathing City into Practice‘. This was followed by four online interactive discussion boards.

You can view these talks again on our YouTube channel, or click on the theme title to download the slides:

The day was concluded with a lively discussion panel to share a variety of perspectives on the topic. The invited panel were:

You can watch the panel discussion again on our YouTube channel: