Integrated System for Intelligent Regional
Environmental Monitoring & Management:
ISIREMM Project description
5.4 Adequacy of chosen Approach
To implement the concepts and framework of ECOSIM in NIS countries,
several challenges and constraints have to be addressed:
Limited availability of continuing observation data with sufficient spatial density;
Limited applicability of complex simulation tools with high data requirements;
Limited availability of reliable high-performance networking infrastructure.
These constraints require a re-thinking of some of the basic assumptions
of the original system, in particular in the area of data availability.
As a consequence, ISIREMM extends the original concepts with the
integration of advanced models developed to meet the specific
local constraints and several data acquisition and
monitoring methods that support these modeling tools.
5.4.1 The ISIREMM advanced model set
Going beyond the basic set of models described above,
the NIS partners in ISIREMM will develop and integrate a
set of aerothermochemical models of different levels of
sophistication (and for different scales) for the studies
of air pollution spread in the atmosphere over an industrial center.
Simplified mathematical models of the urban atmosphere will,
to a great extent, be based on the empirical data from in-situ
and remote sensors. This will provide the system with computationally
efficient tools, when forecasting both the weather conditions and
air pollution transfer in the atmosphere on the urban area scale.
The core element of the simplified models is the system of
the advection-diffusion equations for the indices of air quality
in the urban area the source terms of which describe the
corresponding chemical transformations.
The initial and boundary conditions for this system are,
in fact, the volumetric data acquired with lidars,
after the relevant processing.
The nonstationary spatial fields of the wind and turbulence
characteristics of the atmospheric boundary layer that are
needed for solving the equations of the chemical substances
transport, will be found from reconstructed data on the
dynamics and temperature stratification of the urban air
shed collected with a distributed network of sensors.
The simplified aerothermochemical models will be verified with the
use of data of sodar and lidar sensing of the atmosphere as
well as by making use of ECOSIM/AirWare models and the baseline
model results.
The set of urban forecasting models which are being specially
developed for further use in the ISREMM system and which use
observation data collected with remote sensors will also
be used in the verification when making real-time computations.
This set of models will include a 3D nonhydrostatic mesoscale
model to forecast the volumetric nonstationary distributions of
the wind velocity, temperature, and moisture in the air over a territory
with heat sources and having a complex topography.
The set will also include a 3D Eulerian dispersion model enabling
calculations of the transport and chemical transformations of the
chemicals that are indicators of the air quality.
Turbulent stratification of the atmospheric boundary
layer will be calculated using the two-equation k-l model or
the turbulence model for correlation among the pulsations of the
wind velocity components, temperature, and concentration. Numerical
solution is based on the implicit, or implicit-explicit,
finite-difference schemes with staggered grids.
Discretisation of the initial 3D nonstationary equations will be
performed using the control volume method in the second order approximation
over time and co-ordinates. The convective terms of the
transfer equations are processed by applying the QUICK
procedure by Leonard. The calculations of pressure and corrections
to the velocity field are performed by the discontinuity equation using
SIMPLE algorithm by Patankar and Spalding.
The initial and boundary conditions necessary in the set of
urban forecasting models will be set with the proper account
of the data on meteorological quantities as well as of the
data calculated numerically by applying the models developed
by P03. This type of 3D regional hydrothermodynamical, hydrostatic
models of the admixture transfer have been widely used in
scenario calculations for analysis of the air pollution dispersal
in the atmosphere over Baikal lake,
Tomsk industrial region, as well as of other regions.
5.4.2 New sensors and monitoring data
The development of the remote sensors is based on a set of
existing sensors of the atmosphere as a set of separate
instrumentation each being used, or intended for use,
in different branches of atmospheric studies, including the
tasks of environmental monitoring.
To meet the primary goals of this project the individual
components and instruments will be upgraded to achieve the
overall objective of acquiring comprehensive information on
the state of atmospheric environment. The upgrade will make
it possible to use the set of remote sensors as a
combined means of environmental monitoring providing the
ISIREMM server with real time monitoring data.
The parallel use of a photometer (all sky camera) together
with lidar scanning will provide for higher reliability of detecting
and ranging the emergency events on the territory of Tomsk City. The
photometer functions will be extended by equipping it with additional
blocks for measuring solar radiation fluxes in the spectral range
from UV to the IR and the information content of such lidar
and photometer observations will be more valuable in further analysis
of the environmental processes on the regional scale (atmospheric photochemistry).
Sounding of the atmosphere with a sodar is very promising in getting
a real-time information on temperature stratification of the boundary
atmospheric layer (most dynamic and thus very important in the
environmental processes). The sodar facility available now certainly
needs some modernisation, first in order to increase its operation range
to cover the height range of the atmospheric mixing layer that presents the
main region of the atmosphere where environmental
processes are being developed.
Besides, the modernisation implied under this project is also
aimed at improving the other function of sodar sounding, i.e.,
to measure wind velocity profile in the atmospheric boundary layer.
Since analysis of the state of environment of a big city requires
more information on various atmospheric properties than the
existing local sensor net can provide, it is planned to design
mobile units equipped with standard and specialised sensors to
collect data on meteorological quantities (temperature, vertical gradient
of temperature, wind velocity vector, including its vertical
component, etc). To achieve this task it is assumed that under
this project the mobile unit with Raman lidar and a specialised
meteorological mast and acoustic sounder will be constructed as
well.
It is an important task to develop and implement other algorithms
and procedures for processing the data of atmospheric sensing for making
those directly usable in calculations by 3D models. The
measurement data are urgently needed when initialising the
mathematical models, as the boundary conditions on the free boundaries
and the underlying surface of the region under numerical study.
The measurement data are also needed for reconstructing the
information to be used in calculations by simplified models.
These data may also be directly assimilated with the calculated
results thus providing for improvement of the computer forecast quality.
At the same time the data provided for use in calculations by
the 3D models should not lead to very heavy load on the
computational infrastructure while making the calculated and
forecasted values more realistic. For these reasons the
importance of preparatory work on establishing optimal scheme
of deployment of sensors, sampling rate, period of averaging
the empirical information over time, and so on, must
not be underestimated.
5.4.3 Modeling and optimisation: the DSS components
An important objective of ISIREMM is to provide decision
relevant information. This can be accomplished in a
straight-forward descriptive mode by communication monitoring results,
forecasts under current conditions, or the results of WHAT-IF scenarios.
Alternatively, the system can be used for prescriptive analysis based
on an optimisation approach to find cost-efficient or budget constraints
emission reduction strategies, a minimisation of
environmental impacts (ambient concentration) or minimum cost
compliance strategies.
ISREMM can consider a set of scenarios based on a set of discrete
technological and policy alternatives. Each scenario represents
a different organisation of the emission sources. For each
emission source, a set of alternative discrete pollution control
technologies is defined. These technologies can describe any
technological measure or policy that reduces emissions for a cost.
Costs include investment, operational cost, and social cost in the
case of plant closure or reductions in production levels.
Technological measures include alternative fuels, burners or car
engines, and end-of-stack filter technologies such as electrostatic precipitators
in power plants or catalytic converters in cars.
We associate with a scenario investment and operations costs as
well as other criteria like convenience or political acceptance, etc.
A most important criterion will be the environmental impacts.
The latter are calculated with a spatially distributed non-linear
exposure or environmental and health impact function that can be
derived from the simulation generated estimated
concentrations, including standards and thresholds as well as
spatially distributed weights depending on population distribution
or land use.
The impact function (sum of squares of the exceedance of a
standard value over all spatial units,
scaled by a land-use penalty factor) is then minimised subject
to monetary constraints, given a total
budget, a planning horizon, and a discount rate, computing the
net present value of investment and
operational costs of alternative pollution control strategies.
The result is a cost-effective set of feasible emission control technologies.
5.4.4 Test case application: City of Tomsk
The city and region of Tomsk in western Siberia has been
selected as the ISIREMM validation site due to several reasons:
A key partner is located in its vicinity, which allows the consortium
to rely on the available stationary remote sensors and relevant data archives.
The second reason is the active position that both the Regional
Administration and the local population are taking in environmental
issues. This active role is documented in the composition of
the consortium.
The local interest in environmental matters is partly due to the
existence of a very large nuclear plant and petrochemical enterprise
in the area. In spite of the fact that current proposal does not
directly address radionuclide monitoring, it will be an important
step in this direction.
Also city streets of Tomsk are overwhelmed by cars, mainly
second hand Japanese and European models which in their countries
of origin are no longer in use due to environmental concerns.
The third reason for the selection of Tomsk is that in spite of
its provincial status and geography, 6 local Universities give Tomsk
a quite modern and intellectual environment which is ready to exploit
modern Information Technologies and is used to the Internet for work,
study and ordinary life.
Tomsk is representative for many NIS cities that all but for
Moscow lack a sufficient local net of environmental monitoring stations
to provide conventional information systems with the necessary
data for environmental management.
Last but not least is the fact that Tomsk is under strong influence
of the heavily industrialised surrounding Kusbas Region, as well
as the fact that under proper synoptic weather conditions the
city pollutants easily reach arctic regions. Being situated on
complex hilly terrain and along a river
Tomsk shows a wide range of climatic situations (summer temperature
reaching +38, winter minima -45 degree Centigrade).
Strong cyclones and anticyclones influence and the occurrence of
temperature inversions will allow to test, validate and evaluate
the system under conditions, which are quite typical for a number
of NIS industrial centers.
