The Norwegian Institute for Air Research, NILU, is an independent research institute founded in 1969. The institute conducts environmental research with emphasis on the sources of airborne pollution, atmospheric transport, transformation and deposition and is also involved in the assessment of the effects of pollution on ecosystems, human health and materials. A main priority for NILU is to provide scientific facts on the quantitative relationships between these factors, and at the same time make the results available in user friendly manners for decision-makers.

NILU performs approximately 250 projects each year for governments, industries and national and international organisations. The institute has 135 employees, of which about 70 are scientists, and has accredited laboratories for chemical analyses and monitoring instruments. NILUs annual turnover is 10 mill US$. About 13% of the budget is a base grant from the Norwegian Ministry of Environment and the Norwegian Research Council to support NILU as a national research institution for air pollution. NILUs head office is at Kjeller outside Oslo. A specialised office for Arctic related matters are an integrated part of the Polar Environmental Centre in Tromsø.

NILU has scientific expertise in industrial pollution, urban air and traffic pollution, indoor environment, eutrophication and acid rain, surface ozone, toxic compounds, radioactivity, ozone layer and ultraviolet radiation and climate change. In these areas NILU does both basic, process-oriented research and investigations of the conditions in society that gives rise to pollutant emissions which change the state of the atmosphere with effects that require a political or technological response.

Effects on human health and ecosystems are studied in relation to urban air and traffic pollution and indoor environment and toxic compounds. NILU has recently established a new centre for ecological economics to further develop the research on the socio-economic effects of pollution. The effects of atmospheric pollution on various materials, important for the degradation of cultural heritage, are also studied at NILU.

To work on this issues, NILU develops and uses methodologies such as emission estimation and prediction, field measurements and monitoring, chemical analysis, surveillance (diagnosis), forecasting, dose/response for human health, materials and ecosystems, consequence analysis and action plans, cost-benefit and socio-economic analysis, integrated environmental surveillance and planning systems, national and international co-ordination (incl. data centre functions), development of mathematical models and methods for chemical analyses and instruments for monitoring, information and training.

One of NILU's main strategies is to maintain a lead in the development of integrated environmental surveillance and planning systems. This has resulted in the development of the Environmental Surveillance and Information System (ENSIS) designed for managers and decision-makers. The software parts of this system won the European IT prize 1998.

NILU works for national and international clients as well as own funded projects, often in partnership with other international scientific institutions. Clients vary from small local businesses to United Nations organisations.

NILU has over the years carried out many assignments involving the co-ordination of international environmental research. One example is the Co-operative Programme for Monitoring and Evaluation of the Long-Range Transmission of Air Pollution in Europe (EMEP), for which NILU is the Chemical Co-ordinating Centre. A specific task the last years has been the establishment of the EEA Topic Centre on Air quality where NILU is one of four research institutes running the programme. In the third European Stratospheric Experiments on Ozone funded by the CEC together with national funding agencies, NILU has served as the data centre. NILU is also collecting, storing and producing reports for international bodies like the World Meteorological Organization, Paris and Oslo Commission, the Helsinki Commission and the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program.