Urban air quality assessment and management

Current functionality

The current functionality of the AirWare system (Release 2.1) includes:

Geographic Information System, a hierachical GIS for nested case studies, interactive backgound map generation, design of topical maps, and the management of spatial model input data such as digital elevation models (DEM); embedded GIS functionality is also used for model output display and evaluation functions.
Object DataBase framework for Emission inventories for major industrial (point) sources, (domestic, commercial, and industrial area sources and Meteorology and air quality monitoring data (with time series data display and a range of data analysis tools, including real-time coupling to monitoring equipment; the Swiss company Oekoscience, one of the EUREKA EU1388 partners, manufactures compatible monitoring and communication equipment;
Embedded Expert System, coupled to the various emission inventories, used for the estimation of source terms, the assessment of environmental and human health impacts, and compliance checking;
Transportation Network Editor linked to the line source emission inventory, for traffic emission scenarios, including linkages to traffic simulation models like EMME/2 or VISUM/DYNEMO;
Integrated Simulation Models include: US EPA ISC and AERMOD long- and short-term models; traffic emission/immission modeling; district heating impact assessment; a diagnostic 3D wind field model; TIMES, a dynamic 3D (Eulerian) dispersion model; US EPA PBM ozone box model; REGOZON dynamic multi-layer ozone model developed by GMD FIRST, Berlin, Germany; an optimization routine for emission reduction strategies. In addition, alternative dynamic simulation models are available for accidental release conditions with time varying and intermittent source terms as part of the fully compatible RiskWare model system.
On-line help and explain functions (in hyper-media format), but also references to regulations, standard definitions and guidelines; in parallel, an AirWare Reference Manual and a User Manual as well as a continually updates list of frequently asked questions and answers (FAQ) are accessible through the Internet with any standard browser supported on all AirWare implementation platforms.

Future extension under development, and planned during the course of

EU1388, AIDAIR (urban air pollution)
ECOSIM, Environmental Telematics Application Project
HITERM an Esprit HPCN/DSS project (technological risk)
SIMTRAP an Esprit HPCN/DSS project (traffic and air pollution).

Expected partner contributions from these projects include:

VOC inventory/estimation (expert system), extension for the full list of pollutants in (96/62/EC);
coupling to dynamic traffic models, possible coupling to traffic monitoring and control.
Additional models, meteorological pre-processor model (MM5), 3D Ozone (UAM, REGOZON), street canyon, emergency/puff models, etc. including client/server HPCN implementation of the larger (O3) models developed in separate but related projects under Telematics applications (ECOSIM) and ESPRIT/HPCN
extension for in-door air pollution, health impacts
Expert system (with model coupling) for EIA
Compliance Report generators for monitoring data (and model scenarios) following the Air QUality Framework Directive (96/62/EC);
Public access (WWW) following (90/313/EEC)
advanced data analysis (neural net, ID3 learning, etc.)
coupling to regional energy optimisation (MARKAL)
extension of data bases to cover related environmental variables such as noise,
extended optimization options for complex impacts, cost/benefit, discrete multi-criteria (reference point approach).