4.2 million people die prematurely every year from outdoor ambient air pollution, and it is known that road transport is responsible for a high share of this death toll. In Australia it is estimated that motor vehicles contribute to 47% of NO levels in Perth and 82% in Southeast Queensland. Individual high-emitting vehicles pose a particularly acute problem. High-emitters are very few vehicles (1-3% of the circulating fleet), emitting up to 200 times more emissions than well-maintained vehicles. High-emitters are responsible for up to 40% of all road transport emissions, and they can be of any age, fuel type or brand. To solve this problem, high-emitters must be found in the real-world to act selectively on them. Herein we show the benefits of a novel technology to measure the real-driving emissions from motor vehicles from ITS infrastructure. It is a remote-sensing device based on new-generation lasers, with a modular architecture based on fibre optic, that can be integrated into existing road infrastructures, such as gantries, bridges or poles, to monitor the real emissions from vehicles driving on several lanes. It has been developed under the EU-funded project H2020-NEMO, in collaboration with other 17 partners, including the European Commissions’s JRC. 

This technology has been successfully installed and tested on a sensorized intelligent gantry in Europe, showing 24/7 monitoring capabilities for the precise measurement of CO, CO2, NO, NO2, HC, NH3 and PM2.5 from vehicles’ plumes. Real-time identification and reporting has been tested too, integrating the system with an ITS data platform.