ECOSIM Validation Sites

ECOSIM uses three cities, namely Berlin, Athens, and Gdansk, as validation sites.
They are characterized by a range of environmental, economic, and technological conditions that together provide a rich environment for systems validation.

For each of the three sites, one or more scenarios are defined for the validation exercises.
The validation plan foresees several months of practical application of the Demonstrator by the end users at each site.

Berlin

Scenario B1: Scenario analysis for studying the influence of traffic controlling measures on the regional ozone concentration. The air pollution monitoring network data base in Berlin will be connected with the ECOSIM server. The pre-processed data will be used to create input to a modelling scheme comprising wind-field, air pollution dispersion, and air-chemistry components. The influence of traffic reducing measures on the regional ozone concentration will be investigated, and strategies to reduce regional ozone concentrations will be derived.

In Berlin, a monitoring network for air quality has been run by SSUB for 20 years. There are currently 45 measuring stations for different air pollutants and two additional stations for meteorological measurements. Most of the stations are arranged on a grid of approximately 4km x 4km. Measurements are made of levels of dust, SO2, NOX, CO and O3. In addition to its position, each measurement station has certain key features recorded within a database: its general location (eg inner city/sub-urban), type of district (eg residential, industrial), traffic levels (in bands of vehicles per day), type of private heating (in terms of level of SO2 emissions).

Athens

For Athens, five weather situations have been selected as the basis for the validation experiments.

Scenario A1: Scenario analysis for studying the influence of traffic controlling measures on the regional ozone concentration: Actions of B1 adapted to Athens.

Scenario A2: Scenario analysis for studying the influence of the sea breeze phenomenon on the regional ozone concentration in Athens: The ECOSIM server will be fed with historical water temperature data, and atmospheric parameters (wind speed, air temperature and relative humidity) provided by the atmospheric model. The interface formulation between the atmospheric and coastal water models will be chosen through a number of sensitivity experiments. Simulations will be carried out with the coupled model to study the influence of the sea breeze on the regional ozone concentration.

The focus for the collection of data on pollutants in Greece is a division of the Ministry of the Environment, City Planning and Public Works - PERPA. It is currently undergoing modernization of its environmental data banks

through implementation of a workstation and PC network linked over the HELLASPAC network. The focus for initial implementation has been the main offices of PERPA in Athens together with local sub-networks. It provides access to a wide variety of data and monitoring networks as follows:

• historical data on SO2, PM10 and TSP over the period 1974-1982 from up to 10 monitoring stations;

• a current network comprising 8 automatic and 2 semi-automatic measuring stations providing data on SO2, NOX, ozone, CO and PM10.

Scenario A3: Scenario analysis for studying the interplay between pollution in ground, surface and coastal water: The available data in Athens on landfill effluents (leachate) will be loaded on the ECOSIM server. as input to the ground water model, to quantify the associated flux of water contaminants. Possible interactions between ground, surface and coastal water domains will be analyzed.

For the purposes of scenario A3, a limited database of measurements of the ground water quality exists. Measurements of leachates at the landfill sites are made every few months.

Gdansk

Scenario G1: Case studies for data assimilation and pre-processing to support the building of monitoring networks in Gdansk: All available environmental data of the Gdansk region include remote sensing data will be collected and pre-processed with the ECOSIM server. The data will be used to derive strategies for building monitoring networks for air and water pollution.

Scenario G2: Limited scenario analysis for studying the influence of traffic controlling measures on the regional ozone concentration in Gdansk: The available traffic and air pollution data will be used as input for the model system defined in B1 for the study of the impact of traffic reducing measures on the regional ozone

concentration. The results will be used to derive strategies for the reduction of air pollution.

Scenario G3: Limited scenario analysis for studying the interplay between pollution in ground, surface and coastal water: The available water pollution data in Gdansk will be used as input for the model system defined in A3.

Priorities within the project lie mainly in the scenarios focusing on air pollution. In addition, all scenarios associated with Gdansk will be heavily constrained by the lack of existing monitoring networks and historical data (pollution of air and water is aperiodically measured at a few points and no further use of these data with decision support systems etc).