Using data to reduce air pollution from construction sites

What can the Air Pollution Risk Index be used for?

1. The index enables more informed decision-making

The tool shows which areas might have the highest need in terms of the health effects of air pollution. The tool also demonstrates how many schools, care homes or hospitals are in the area, which provides another level of detail that can be considered when making decisions.

2. The index enables a greater degree of transparency

Other factors might feed into the final selection of sites, such as considerations regarding which stakeholders are more likely to be open to change their approaches, or how long planned construction work will take. The tool can help improve clarity and transparency regarding the factors that are shaping decisions. By providing clarity regarding neighbourhood risk, other considerations are contextualised and can be made transparent. A stakeholder may not choose to work in the most at-risk areas, but that would be a conscious decision.

3. The index can support community engagement and co-development of localised strategies

The tool provides information on the ethnicity, sex, and disability status of people living in each neighbourhood, which can inform targeted outreach and engagement strategies within selected areas.

How does the index work?

The Air Pollution Risk Index primarily does two things:

1. It estimates the level of need of each small geographic area in Lambeth and Southwark.

The index includes several indicators, organised into four categories:

• Socio-demographics
• Health outcomes
• Air pollution (indoor)
• Air pollution (outdoor)

Users can include or exclude specific factors based on their priorities.

The Index weights categories equally, regardless of the number of indicators in each category. It then produces an overall score and groups all areas into deciles – ranging from highest need (decile 1) to lowest need (decile 10) across all included indicators and categories.

2. The Index provides an overview of the area within a 250-metre radius of each construction site, offering insights into:

• the total number of people, and the total number of schools, hospitals, and care homes in the surrounding community,
• the names and level-of-need deciles of neighbourhoods within this radius.

To provide deeper insights, an added tooltip feature displays detailed information on the diversity of each area, including data on ethnicity, disability, and sex.

The Air Pollution Risk Index has some limitations:

• Professional judgement and careful consideration are needed. Professional judgement and careful consideration are needed to decide whether highest need areas should be prioritised (regardless of potentially low need in neighbouring areas that would also benefit from intervening action) or whether the average need of affected areas should be considered. It is also possible to look at the tooltips and consider prioritising areas with higher proportions of people from minoritised ethnic groups, or with reported disabilities to ensure affected communities’ needs are advocated for.

• The Air Pollution Risk Index provides limited information on the construction sites themselves. For example, it does not provide any information on the readiness of construction companies to adopt new ways of working. Moreover, it does not yet include information on the potential impact of construction sites, based on the expected levels of emissions.
• The Air Pollution Risk Index provides an estimation of relative need. The tool includes a selection of indicators that are closely related to the health effects of air pollution – however, other indicators might be relevant, and as such might be included in further iterations of this tool. Moreover, currently all categories are weighted evenly, and all indicators within each category are weighted evenly. This might not be a fully accurate reflection of the relative importance of the various indicators.

Although the Air Pollution Risk Index was created to support the construction strand of the Health effects of air pollution programme, we believe its approach to bringing together data can be replicated for other areas of work within the programme and more widely.

We are looking forward to learning how its use will help our programme and partner maximise their impact and how we can improve the approach to benefit other strands of work.