Recommendations for an update of the Implementing Provisions for Reporting (IPR) in connection with the revision of the Ambient Air Quality Directives. ETC HE Report 2022/7.

This report aims to support the on-going revision of the Ambient Air Quality Directives by providing a series of recommendations on the reciprocal exchange of information and reporting of ambient air quality (e-reporting) following the Commission Implementing Decision (2011/850/EU). It builds on the experience and understanding from the EEA and technical experts at its European Topic Centre for Human Health and the Environment (ETC HE) working with implementing provisions for reporting (IPR) and identifies areas for further efficiency gains in e-reporting, in particular concerning the H-K dataflows.

In this report we explore how the enhanced availability of high-quality modelling information opens for a considerable amount of new information susceptible to be incorporated in the e-reporting system and how the e-reporting system would need to be adapted to allow for a more prominent role of modelling information in air quality management practices in response to the on-going revision of the Ambient Air Quality Directives (AAQDs).

We have identified a series of principles and basic rules to secure further efficiency of the e-reporting system and to deal with possible new data and information that may be available as a consequence of the on-going revision of the AAQDs. The eight guiding principles are for data and information required for e-reporting to be transparent, comparable, complete, quantifiable, documented as metadata, stored in common repositories, usable and useful; and be either mandatory or conditional. Following these principles, we have arrived at a series of recommendations on how to revise the current e-reporting system with assessment and air quality planning activities.

For assessment purposes, we have identified three areas where an extensive use of modelling results will require a revision of the current e-reporting requirements, namely in relation to the determination of the area of representativeness, to the estimation of exceedance and exposure situation and to the reporting  of modelling quality indicators. 

For air quality planning, we propose a significant simplification of the structure of the current  H-K dataflow to be streamlined to a single dataflow, linking emission and projection information to actual air quality concentration indicators, identifying the contribution from main sources, and listing relevant packages of control measures buy without asking for the impact of each individual control measure.