Olores.org Newsletter March 2026

   The deadline to apply for the 24h‑MOM Travel Awards is approaching. These travel grants are designed to support students attending conferences, congresses, workshops, and advanced courses on odours, air quality, and olfactometry during 2026 and 2027. 

    Funded by the surplus generated within the 24h‑MOM (24‑hour Marathon on Odour/Odor Management), these awards target students in fields such as environmental or chemical engineering, biotechnology, microbiology, water and waste management, chemistry, environmental sciences, or other disciplines related to air quality and odour control.

   Olfasense GmbH has officially opened registration for its 2026 Proficiency Test (PT), inviting olfactometric laboratories worldwide to take part. Accredited since 2005, this PT provides laboratories with the opportunity to evaluate their performance in line with the criteria set out in EN 13725:2022, a key standard for laboratories maintaining ISO 17025 accreditation. The annual proficiency test continues to play a key role in confirming that laboratories meet international standards for olfactometric measurements.

   The 2026 PT is again designed to help laboratories verify their compliance with the critical performance criteria of EN 13725:2022, focusing on precision under repeatability conditions and accuracy for 1-butanol. These parameters remain fundamental for assessing the reliability and consistency of olfactometric measurements. Moreover, participants will once more have the option to analyse Tetrahydrothiophen (THT), which will be included if at least eight laboratories register for this additional measurement.

   After a series or many meetings during the first months of the year, the IEEE working group developing the IEEE P2520.1 draft has reached its final stage of development, bringing the baseline standard for machine olfaction devices and systems closer to completion. This draft defines a common testing framework for these devices, with the goal of measuring their performance in differentiation, recognition, and quantification tasks.

   The new IEEE standard P2520.1 is designed to provide a baseline performance standard that can be applied across a wide range of machine olfaction technologies. The document makes clear that it is intended as a foundation for the broader P2520 series, allowing more application-specific standards to build on top of a shared testing structure. Mr. James Covington, convenor of this initiative, recently talked about this new standard in the 24h-MOM.

   The Italian company Enviroware is just on fire. They recently released an update of their CALPUFF GUI and also they published an update of their well-known model LAPMOD.  EW_LAPMOD is a graphical User Interface (GUI) designed for the Lagrangian particle model LAPMOD, an open-source tool used for simulating the dispersion of atmospheric pollutants. The software operates on Windows systems (we, linux users, will be missing it) and aims to simplify both the preparation of model inputs and the analysis of outputs generated by LAPMOD.

   Enviroware has released a new update to the official GUI for the propietary, source-available (not open-source) Lagrangian particle model LAPMOD, featuring two major new features:  

   Scentroid has introduced several improvements to its SIMS3 platform, enhancing the accuracy of emission plume visualization, integrating new monitoring hardware, and refining analytical tools for more robust odour event assessment. These updates aim to provide more reliable representations of atmospheric dispersion patterns and improve data interpretation in environmental monitoring applications.

   Recent developments in the Scentroid SIMS3 system focus on upgrading how emission plumes are modelled and displayed. The standard heatmap representation has been replaced by a custom visualization engine that ensures higher spatial resolution and stability at all zoom levels. This modification eliminates clustering effects common in dense measurement networks and provides better definition near emission sources, particularly under variable meteorological conditions. The result is a more consistent and realistic depiction of dispersion dynamics, improving the interpretation of odour and pollutant transport in complex environments.

  Enviroware, an Italian company specialised in air quality consulting, has released version 7.2.1 of its EW_CALPUFF, a graphical user interface (GUI) dedicated to easily manage the Lagrangian puff model CALPUFF, widely used in atmospheric dispersion modelling for pollutants and odours.

  If you work with odour modelling, you are probably familiar with the dispersion model CALPUFF. This is a propietary, source-available (not open-source) non-steady-state Lagrangian puff model used to simulate pollutant transport, transformation, and deposition, taking into account time- and space-varying meteorological conditions. The official proprietary software (not open-source) CALPUFF core models (CALMET, CALPUFF, and CALPOST) are free to download and can be run via the command line, although the GUI requires a paid licence. In the past, there were several other GUIs available, such as CALPro, CALApps, or Beeline, but all of these have now been discontinued. Another well-known GUI is this one of the Italian company Enviroware that has been recently updated. This release introduces two new features.