Winner: 2024 Technical Excellence Prize
NPL Air Quality Networks Team
National Physical Laboratory
For outstanding application of knowledge and teamwork to produce 20 years of robust, high-quality air pollutant data for three of the UK’s air quality networks, advancing science, informing policy makers, and protecting the health of the public.
The NPL Air Quality Networks team measure air pollution at monitoring stations across the UK: in towns and cities, industrial settings and remote rural locations. The results they produce are made freely available to everyone: this allows the government to see if their air quality targets are met, the public to understand how clean their air is, and researchers to better understand the health effects of air pollution. The team’s results must be accurate, so they ensure that their sample analysis and data processing methods are robust by using numerous quality control procedures. They also use data and samples from the network for scientific research to help them better understand the sources of air pollution and changes in the concentration of pollutants over time.
Biography
The Air Quality Networks team at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in Teddington, UK, includes scientists, laboratory-based analysts, field engineers and a project manager, all with a wide range of science backgrounds and career pathways.