Ten years of research and policy on particulate matter air pollution in hot spot Flanders

Air pollution is a systemic risk embedded in environmental, political, social and economic systems. Risk assessments on air pollution therefore involve communication between several stakeholders at multiple scale levels. This study focuses on a small part of the risk assessment, evaluating actions or decisions on both policy and research fields using an importance-performance/feasibility analysis as a scoring methodology. Subsequently, results were discussed by researchers and policy makers at a closed workshop to guarantee a safe place for knowledge integration. Learned aspects and new insights are useful for future scenarios on air pollution. This study was performed in Flanders, the European hot spot for air particulate matter. After 10 years of policy efforts in Flanders, the daily air particulate matter PM10 standard, which was enforced by the European Commission (EC) in 1999, is still being exceeded more times than allowed. No exemption for not achieving this standard was granted by the EC. What went wrong on policy and research fields in Flanders and how can this situation be prevented in the future taking into account the new PM2.5 standard that will be implemented in 2015 (European Directive 2008/50/EC)? Results of the importance-performance/feasibility analysis on actions related to PM research and policy in Flanders and discussions at the workshop, improving the communication between researchers and governmental stakeholders, are looked at.