System Integration Plan:
Monitoring Network Integration

Keywords: Software development, prototyping, testing and validation, software tools, common data formats, networking, client-server architecture. DRAFT Release 0.2, 14 September 1997 Author: Kurt Fedra

Description of the Monitoring Networks

Athens monitoring network

The current equipment of the Athens Atmospheric Pollution Monitoring Network (APMN) consists of two PC-compatibles without network connection, that use modems and and a specific communications package to contact the data loggers through the telephone. Simple ASCII data are downloaded, and stored in a custom-made data base on the PCs in DBF format. Data base dumps (exports) in ASCII format are supported.

Annual data amount to approximately 10 MB, the total amount of historical data stored since 1984 is approximately 120 MB.

The National Environmental Data Network (NEDN) with a central node in Athens and a number of regional units is not yet connected to the atmospheric pollution monitoring, as an update and restructuring of NEDN facilities is imminent.

NEDN currently operates an HP 9000 Server connected to five low-end graphical workstations (HP 9000-705) and a number of color and black and white X-terminals. All workstation are operating under HP-UX, as a relational data base engine Ingres is used.

Planned upgrades

Planned upgrades relevant to the APMN are

restructuring of the APMN into an Operational Center (>B>OC) for monitoring and short-term forecasting
expansion and restructuring of the NEDN.

Since both measures are just entering the tendering state, ECOSIM can only use the available technical specification as the basis for designing the interface and integration of the APMN. Since the actual implementation and routine operation of the new systems will take at the very least till mid 1997 for the OC and at least two years (end of 1998) for the NEDN, the integration with ECOSIM will have to be based on historical data in a simulated Data Resources Server with the characteristics of the planned OC.

The OC will use an HP 9000-7.xx workstation under HP-UX, the TCP-IP protocol for networking, and the ORACLE RDBMS as a data base engine.

These specifications are fully in line with the ECOSIM integration plan and will allow on-line access to the monitoring data through TCP/IP and http over LAN or WAN connections.

The BLUME Monitoring network in Berlin

Network Design

BLUME guarantees continuous air quality monitoring since 1975.

to measure the air pollution for the licensing of plants according to the Technical Instruction of Air Quality Control (TA Luft)
to identify sources of air pollution
to verify the effect of air pollution control and prevention
to detect smog-situations within the framework of smog alert plans

The network consists of measurement equipment placed in containers which are positioned in a 4 km-grid according to the requirements of the TA Luft.

Additional measurements are performed in streets and residential areas with high pollution. The same measuring devices are on top of Berlin-Frohnau's Telephone tower at a height of 324 m to determine the influence of distant sources. All measuring devices are connected via telephone to the central computer, which controls the complete network and at the same time serves as the evaluation unit. In 1994, there were 45 containers with 147 measuring devices, among them 39 units for SO2, 43 for suspended particulate matter, 29 for NOx, 21 for CO, 10 for ozone, and 5 for HC(Hydrocarbons).

The total investment for the monitoring equipment was about 10 million DM. Costs for operation and maintenance are about 1,6 million DM per year. A team of 20 technicians and scientists is responsible for the operation of the network and the evaluation of the data.

Public Information

The data of ambient air monitoring are shown permanently on a display in the entrance hall of our office. 30-minute-values are transferred automatically to the Meteorological Institute of the Freie Universität Berlin. The institute's online weather information includes a report on ambient air quality in Berlin and is updated hourly. These reports are broadcasted regularly by several radio stations. From Monday through Friday, all 11 o'clock values and the maxima of the last 24 hours are reported daily in the press service of the government of Berlin. The information is also accessible through the BTX system of the German Telecom.

Main Results

The air pollution by SO2 and dust has gone down since 1976 to about 20 % and 60 % due to the shift of from coal to cleaner fuels for domestic heating systems, and the reduction of the limits for sulfur content of the coal.

Levels of SO2 pollution are almost identical in both parts of Berlin, whereas dust-concentrations are higher in the eastern part. The daily trends of pollution levels on workdays and on the weekends show the strong influence of vehicle traffic, especially on the NOx concentrations. Usually, pollution levels reach a maximum in the inner-city areas during rush-hour on weekdays.

The distribution of ozone shows the opposite trend. Ozone is the only pollutant where concentrations on weekends and in the the suburbs are higher than in the inner city area.

Model Integration

Air Quality Management in Berlin

Since the year 1988 the ozone concentration in the surface layer is continuously registered by the Berlin Air Quality Measuring Network BLUME .

Today we have 11 stations in the region of Berlin. As the ozone formation in the lower atmosphere is forced by summer temperatures and intense solar radiation we document this concentration not as an annual mean value, but as the average daily maximum during the summer months (April to September). This value remained nearly constant during the last 8 years, only during 1992 and 1994, where we had very high temperatures during the summer months, there were slightly higher values registered.

Since summer 1995 in Germany the Federal Immission Protection Act has been supplemented to give the legal basis to „summer smog" ordinances, if there were maximum half-hour ozone-loads of more than 180 µg/mł respective 240 µg/mł measured in a wide area. The lower value has been exceeded in Berlin at 9 days during the year 1995, 4 days in 1996 and 5 days in 1997.

The higher value (240 µg/mł), which would cause driving restrictions for cars, which have no regulated catalytic converters, was not reached in Berlin during the last years. Only during 2 days in the summer of 1994 such high concentrations were reached.

To simulate the formation of ozone in the region of Berlin the model REGOZON was created by the GMD in the years 1992 to 1993. To validate the model results with real data, we had a measuring campaign together with Brandenburg, where 2 planes, regional measuring networks, mobile measuring vehicles and observatories collected data of ozone, nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons. The campaign of 23. to 27.7.94 was undertaken during the first phase of a long period of high summer weather with a series of 11 so-called ‘hot days’.

At the 27.7.1994 at 16 h during highest ozone concentration of 240 µg/mł were observed over the southern (lee-side) city limits. There are low ozone levels in the city center caused by high NO_x emissions of the traffic. In order to compare the model calculation with this experimental measuring results, the existing REGOZON (Mieth, P, et al, 1992, 1993) simulation model was applied to the real weather and emission situation of 27.7.94 The basis of the model is a three-layer mesoscalic flow and transport model and the chemical reaction mechanism CBM-IV.

The simulation results agree well with the measurements. Maximum ozone concentration is attained in the plume of the city at some distance from the centre like they were measured. The simulations confirmed the existence of considerable ozone production in the area investigated, caused by the human emissions of ozone precursor substances in the built-up area of Berlin.

The degree of ozone production of Berlin was very well registered by the ozone measurements in the planes during their flights across the city, which always showed higher ozone concentrations (14% to 44 %) behind the city than in front of the city (lee effect). This fact gives us the security, that it may be possible to influence the peak ozone concentration in the region of Berlin by reducing the emissions of the precursor substances nitrogen oxide and hydrocarbons.

Only with model simulations it is possible to calculate the effects on ozone concentration, which can be obtained by reducing the emission. The actual emission reduction which could be achieved by the possible regulations of „summer smog alarm"are:

In the region of Berlin these restrictions result in a reduction of 32% of the nitrogen oxide and 27% of the hydrocarbons emission.The ozone-simulation for this scenario show, that the peak ozone concentration was reduced by less than 10%, so the measures against high ozone concentrations in the region of Berlin may have a (small) effect.

In the German Federal Immission Protection Act the government can forbid the traffic by cars without catalytic converter, if the maximum ozone concentration is forecasted to be higher than 240µg/mł. So the Berlin government needs a forecast of maximum ozone concentrations for the next day, to plan their „summer smog" ordinances.

The first step in this direction was to use the REGOZON model for this purpose. The ECOSIM Project of the European Commission has that goal too, so we work in this project as a partner.

Since this summer the REGOZON model was modified to use all available weather and air pollution data in the region of Berlin to make a 24 hour forecast of the ozone concentration field.

The results can be called from the Internet http://gmd.first.de/ozon every day. That is the first time that an regional ozone-forecasting model is running automatically and online. As an example the 24-hour-forecast of the ozone load on August 13th of this year is shown. The maximum forecasted ozone concentration for this day was about 170 µg/mł and the maximum measured value was about 180 µg/mł.

In the most of the cases during this summer the results of the simulation were not as good as this one, because there are still no weather forecasting data used in this version of the model. This will be changed during the next weeks. After this modifications, some situations of high ozone concentration will be re-calculated with the model, to prove whether and in which degree the results are better when weather forecasting data were used to drive the REGOZON model.

System Integration Plan: Monitoring Network Integration