Biodiversity, Urban Quality Life and Air Quality Indices for Hotspot Detection of Transformation Opportunities in Cities: A Case Study in Barcelona

Half of the world's population lives in cities, where usually there are few little green space and there are also high levels of air pollution. Moreover, the traditional urbanization of cities contributes to climate change, promotes the loss of global biodiversity and induces serious health problems for citizens. Both climate change and the loss of biodiversity affect negatively to the ecosystems and therefore human health, as they are responsible for providing clean air, food, fresh water, medicines, renewable resources. . . This deterioration increases significantly the risk of human-borne infectious diseases such as coronavirus or HIV. The ability we have to re-naturalize anthropogenic spaces and learn to generate spaces for coexistence will be key for the future of our society. The research presented in this paper aims to do a step forward to achieve that ability by working in three schools of the city of Barcelona and their surroundings. Among other actions, in this project, a diagnosis of neighborhood has been carried out. The diagnosis includes the identification and quantification of relevant indicators regarding neighborhood's biodiversity and also the quality of daily life and the analysis of pollutants (NO2 and PM10) near the schools during the 2021-2022 school year. All these information has been merged in a single geographic data base and relevant hotspots where to act have been identified. The information has been shared with city council and citizens. Copyright © 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda.