Prashant Kumar

University of Surrey · Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE), Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Air pollution is a global issue, and its health impacts are discussed at the major level. Among different types of air pollutants, Particulate Matter (PM) is a primary pollutant that causes serious health issues related to pulmonary functions. India, one of the rapidly developing countries propelled by intense urbanization and industrial growth, fa...

Extreme temperature events such as heatwaves are becoming increasingly severe and frequent because of climate change, posing significant challenges to public health and energy infrastructure. This study explores the impacts of extreme temperature events leading to heat‐/cold waves on public health and energy consumption in Kazakhstan from 1959 to 2...

Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) poses significant health risks, prompting public health organizations to recommend the use of respirators and facemasks (RFMs) to mitigate exposure. Consequently, interest in their usage has increased, leading to several studies assessing the efficiency of these personal-level interventions against various fractions...

Soybeans, a vital source of protein for animal feed and an essential industrial raw material, are the most traded agricultural commodity worldwide. Accurate price forecasting is crucial for maintaining a resilient global food supply chain and has significant implications for agricultural economics and policymaking. This review examines over 100 soy...

Urban heat island (UHI) and urban pollution island (UPI) effects are two major challenges that affect the liveability and sustainability of cities under the circumstance of climate change. However, existing studies mostly addressed them separately. Urban green infrastructure offers nature-based solutions to alleviate urban heat, enhance air quality...

Background Poor air quality can both trigger and aggravate lung and heart conditions, as well as affecting child development. It can even lead to neurological and mental health problems. However, the precise mechanisms by which air pollution affect human health are not well understood. Aims To promote interdisciplinary dialogue and better research...

Green infrastructure (GI) offers a promising solution for mitigating the adverse effects of climate change, but evaluating its effectiveness necessitates a comprehensive understanding of how that has been quantified in the literature. This study aims to review the methods (monitoring, remote sensing, and modelling) employed to assess the effectiven...

Low-cost sensors (LCS) for indoor and ambient air quality monitoring have gained significant attention in recent decades due to their affordability, availability, and potential for broad usage in various environments. LCS are available in diverse types, each with its own specifications. These sensors present a cost-effective solution for air qualit...

This paper explores the evolution of geoscientific inquiry, tracing the progression from traditional physics-based models to modern data-driven approaches facilitated by significant advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and data collection techniques. Traditional models, which are grounded in physical and numerical frameworks, provide robust...

As cities continue to grow, developing mitigation strategies is crucial to minimize the corresponding increase in air pollutants. One source of potentially controllable air pollution is the emissions from residential buildings. We conducted a literature review to systematically examine air pollution emissions from residential buildings in urban are...

Green-blue-grey infrastructure (GBGI) offers environmental benefits in urban areas, yet its impact on air pollution is under-researched, and the literature fragmented. This review evaluates quantitative studies on GBGI's capability to mitigate air pollution, compares their specific pollutant removal processes, and identifies areas for further inves...

Globally, the deteriorating Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect poses a significant threat to human health and undermines ecosystem stability. UHI mitigation strategies have been investigated and utilized extensively within cities by the provision of green, blue or grey infrastructures. However, urban land is precious and limited for these interventions...

Urban greening is on rise worldwide due to its wide-ranging direct and indirect benefits. These direct benefits can span from working as a passive barrier between vehicles and pedestrians in near-road environments, capturing particulate matter from the atmospheric environments and mitigating the impact of urban heat island at city scale, acting as...

The fast-growing sensing technology means there is an extensive range of low-cost indoor air quality (IAQ) devices or sensor modules readily available on the commercial market. However, less attention has been paid to exploring people's perceptions and responses to indoor air pollution. Such knowledge is deemed important for improving the design of...

** data can be used provided the related paper is properly cited ** Zivelonghi, A., & Kumar, P. (2024). Benefits and thermal limits of CO2-driven signaled windows opening in schools: an in-depth data-driven analysis. Energy and Buildings, 303, 113621. Full data collection in MATLAB format of CO2, Tin/out, N time series measured from October 2021...

*** data can be used provided the related paper is properly cited *** Zivelonghi, A., & Kumar, P. (2024). Benefits and thermal limits of CO2-driven signaled windows opening in schools: an in-depth data-driven analysis. Energy and Buildings, 303, 113621. Full data collection of CO2 and Temperatures time series measured from October 2021 and May 20...

** data can be used provided the related paper is properly cited ** Zivelonghi, A., & Kumar, P. (2024). Benefits and thermal limits of CO2-driven signaled windows opening in schools: an in-depth data-driven analysis. Energy and Buildings, 303, 113621.

This work examined the efficacy of passive air pollution mitigation measures (green infrastructure) in elderly care centres (ECCs) located around heavily-trafficked roads. We measured indoor and outdoor PM2.5 concentrations of three ECCs near major roads. We found that the highest PM2.5 concentrations were usually occurred during peak traffic. ECC3...

The air quality in classrooms significantly impacts school children’s health and learning performance. It has been reported worldwide that classroom air quality does not meet the required standard and actions are pledged for improvement. However, it poses a challenge for decision-making in terms of prioritising taking-up measures. The aim of this s...

The high demand for generation and development in wind electrical power competitiveness has gained significant popularity in wind energy and speed forecasting models. It is also an essential method for planning the wind power plant system. Several models were created in the past to forest the speed and energy of the Wind. However, results have very...

Realistic natural ventilation potential estimation is critical for energy-efficient building design. For buildings in urban areas, evaluations using design expectations tend to overestimate potential. This study presents a comprehensive framework and corresponding method to predict the natural ventilation potential of buildings, integrating multipl...

If some countries lead by example, standards may increasingly become normalized

The combination of urbanization and global warming leads to urban overheating and compounds the frequency and intensity of extreme heat events due to climate change. Yet, the risk of urban overheating can be mitigated by urban green-blue-grey infrastructure (GBGI), such as parks, wetlands, and engineered greening, which have the potential to effect...

Ensuring environmental justice necessitates equitable access to air quality data, particularly for vulnerable communities. However, traditional air quality data from reference monitors can be costly and challenging to interpret without in-depth knowledge of local meteorology. Low-cost monitors present an opportunity to enhance data availability in...

Understanding of the various sources of indoor air pollution requires indoor air quality (IAQ) data that is usually lacking. Such data can be obtained using unobtrusive, low-cost sensors (LCS). The aim of this review is to examine the recent literature published on LCS for IAQ measurements and to determine whether these studies employed any methods...

We estimated the particle number distributions (PNDs), particle number concentrations (PNCs), physicochemical characteristics, meteorological effects, and respiratory deposition doses (RDD) in the human respiratory tract for three different particle modes: nucleation (N6–30), accumulation (N30–300), and coarse (N300–10,000) modes. This study was co...

Ambient air quality is the most important environmental factor affecting human health, estimated by the WHO to be responsible for 4.2 million deaths annually. Having timely estimates for air quality is critical for implementing public policies that can limit anthropogenic emissions, reduce human exposure and allow for preparation and interventions...

** data can be used provided the related paper is properly cited ** Zivelonghi, A., & Kumar, P. (2024). Benefits and thermal limits of CO2-driven signaled windows opening in schools: an in-depth data-driven analysis. Energy and Buildings, 303, 113621.

Particulate matter (PM) resuspension from indoor surfaces is one of the leading causes of occupant exposure to PM. It has been recognized as a main source of indoor air pollution by many field studies. This review article explores the mechanisms and effects of single and multiple influential factors on PM resuspension, distribution characteristics,...

The international community, particularly across the European Union (EU), is increasingly recognizing and promoting Nature-based Solutions (NBS) as long-term and sustainable measures against hydro-meteorological hazards such as flooding, coastal erosion, heat waves and landslides. Yet, scaled implementation of NBS at EU and global level presently r...

Scientific evidence sustains PM2.5 particles' inhalation may generate harmful impacts on human beings' health; therefore, their monitoring in ambient air is of paramount relevance in terms of public health. Due to the limited number of fixed stations within the air quality monitoring networks, development of methodological frameworks to model ambie...

Low-cost sensors (LCSs) for measuring air pollution are increasingly being deployed in mobile applications, but questions concerning the quality of the measurements remain unanswered. For example, what is the best way to correct LCS data in a mobile setting? Which factors most significantly contribute to differences between mobile LCS data and thos...

Background: Children spend significant amounts of time at school, making the school environment a potentially important contributor to air quality exposure. Aim: The SAMHE project has a dual aim: 1) to develop and test a bespoke citizen science framework for collecting environment and indoor air quality data in classrooms, alongside contextual dat...

Tropospheric ozone threatens human health and crop yields, exacerbates global warming, and fundamentally changes atmospheric chemistry. Evidence has pointed toward widespread ozone increases in the tropo-sphere, and particularly surface ozone is chemically complex and difficult to abate. Despite past successes in some regions, a solution to new cha...

The health and academic performance of children are significantly impacted by air quality in classrooms. However, there is a lack of understanding of the relationship between classroom air pollutants and contextual factors such as physical characteristics of the classroom, ventilation and occupancy. We monitored concentrations of particulate matter...

Background: Poor air quality is associated with poor health. Little attention is given to the complex array of environmental exposures and air pollutants that affect mental health during the life course. Aims: We gather interdisciplinary expertise and knowledge across the air pollution and mental health fields. We seek to propose future research...

The knowledge derived from successful case studies can act as a driver for the implementation and upscaling of nature-based solutions (NBS). This work reviewed 547 case studies to gain an overview of NBS practices and their role in reducing the adverse impact of natural hazards and climate change. The majority (60 %) of case studies are situated in...

The sustainability of life on Earth is under increasing threat due to human-induced climate change. This perilous change in the Earth's climate is caused by increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, primarily due to emissions associated with burning fossil fuels. Over the next two to three decades, the effects of cli...

Sand and dust storms (SDS) are a major disruptor in both the source areas where they occur and at distant locations. This critical review aims to address the question of whether mitigation and adaptation measures have been or can be implemented and what is the optimal scale of their implementation to negate the impacts of SDS in Eastern Mediterrane...

Background Spread of SARS-CoV2 by aerosol is considered an important mode of transmission over distances >2 m, particularly indoors. Objectives We determined whether SARS-CoV2 could be detected in the air of enclosed/semi-enclosed public spaces. Methods and analysis Between March 2021 and December 2021 during the easing of COVID-19 pandemic restr...

Providing children with a clear understanding of climate change drivers and their mitigation is crucial for their roles as future earth stewards. To achieve this, it will be necessary to reverse the declining interest in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education in schools in the UK and other countries, as STEM skills will b...

Residential solid fuel combustion has increased because of rising energy costs but little is known about the emission characteristics of unregulated pollutants such as ultrafine particles (UFPs). This review aims to characterise the emissions and chemical composition of UFPs, build an understanding of the particle number size distribution (PSD), as...

We compared various pollutant concentrations (PM1, PM2.5, PM10, PNC, BC) at four different urban microenvironments (MEs) in London (Indoor, IN; Traffic Intersection, TI; Park, PK; and Street Canyon, SC). The physico-chemical characteristics of particles were analysed, and the respiratory deposition doses (RDD) were estimated. Field measurements wer...

Air pollution is a major threat to public health. By reducing environmental impacts, countries can reduce the burden of illnesses such as stroke, heart disease, lung cancer, and chronic or acute respiratory diseases (such as asthma). This study assessed indoor aerosol exposure in the Akure metropolis (residential, office, commercial area, and labor...

A series of wind tunnel experiments were conducted in the University of Surrey's Environmental Flow wind tunnel with a 1:50 scale of a typical London street canyon to assess the exposure of cyclists riding in a group to the emissions of polluting vehicles. A propane source emitted from an Ahmed body was used to model a car exhaust and a fast flame...