DIRECCIÓ GENERAL DE QUALITAT AMBIENTAL I CANVI CLIMÀTIC SERVEI DE VIGILÀNCIA I CONTROL DE L’AIRE

The Air Monitoring and Control Service (AMCS) of the Environmental Quality and Climate Change General Direction (DGQACC) is part of the   Climate Action, Food and Rural Agenda  Department of Regional Government of CATALONIA. The AMCS has powers on the 7.7 million inhabitants of CATALONIA and, according to its organizational decree, has the following functions:

•  To organize and manage the Air Pollution Monitoring and Forecasting Network of CATALONIA and the Atmospheric Emissions continuous control Network of CATALONIA.
• To elaborate emission authorisation proposals for air potentially polluting activities and to elaborate prevention reports for air potentially polluting infrastructures, plans and programmes.
• To assess and to give technical support to local entities, police and judicial agents on air pollution prevention, inspection and control, and also to monitor, prevent, inspect and control emissions from potentially air polluting activities and to propose corrective measures.
• To manage and update the reference inventory of air pollutants emissions in CATALONIA.
• To formulate and propose Air Quality Plans, to coordinate with the stakeholders and to monitor its implementation. • To approve and disseminate technical instructions, guides and technical criteria related to air quality and air pollutants emissions, as well as to assess local entities, companies and civil society or administrative organizations on air pollution issues.

AMCS has expertise in air quality monitoring since 1991 and also on air pollutant emissions monitoring and air quality and air pollutant emission measurements. Most of air quality monitoring data are automatically transferred to a central database and are publically available in real time at:

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AMCS provides prognoses of air quality for its webpage, tv, radio, and newspapers. AMCS has also expertise in elaborating air quality plans since 1995 in order to restore the air quality in polluted areas. AMCS is responsible for and participates in projects focussing on, for example, assessment of abatement measures to reduce impacts of air pollution emissions, air pollution epidemiology, and health effect impact assessments. AMSC does an important job of assessing and giving technical support to local entities, companies, civil society and administrative organizations as well as on disseminating and raising public awareness on air pollution issues.