The objective of RiskWare/NIR is to provide an integrated information system for the management and analysis of data relating to electromagnetic radiation from various sources and its environmental impacts on a regional to local scale.

Sources covered include both point and line objects, i.e., power lines and transformator stations (ELF), and antennas for TV, radio, and cellular phones (RF).

This functionality is based on the framework provided by RiskWare and its

• embedded hybrid GIS,
• HOT, the Heterarchical Object Tool,
• an embedded HTML browser,
• and the rule-based expert system XPS/RTXPS;
• and its generic interface for simulation and assessment models.
• as well as an embedded help- and explain hypertext system (HTML) including the possibility to link to external on-line manual pages.

RiskWare/NIR supports GIS data import and management of "NIR relevant" cartography (in particular vectorized maps with resolutions ranging from 1:250,000 to local scales of 1:5,000/1:2000, orthophotos, and a high resolution DEM) with its hybrid GIS integrating vector and raster data, embedded with the object database and model output display.

The embedded GIS functions include:

1. The fully integrated treatment of vector and raster data including dsatellite imagery, orthopohotos, and digital terrain models; this includes the interactive selection and stacking of map layers representing different topics or feature such as lan use classes;
2. The integration of alphanumeric data such as place names;
3. Integration of raster (matrix) data such as satellite imagery, orthophotos, or scanned raster maps;
4. Treatment of terrain features, land use, or obstacles (buildings);
5. Integration of point or raster data as regular grids such as elevation (DEM) or population density.

The HOT Heterarchical Object Tool provides object data base templates for a multi-media presentation of the data contents with its embedded HTML browser linked to the data bases and the systems knowledge base, as well as selection and analysis functions providing:

• interface to the "NIR sources" database
• interface to the "NIR measurements" database

The object data include:

1. Tabular description of the object (source) attributes, including both technical and administrative data in a relational structure;
2. Textual description of the objects (HTML);
3. Associated imagery (digital photographs, scanned images);
4. Automatically generated local maps showing the location and its neighbourhood;
5. Automatically generated diagrams showing antenna characteristics, orientation, and near-field EM data, both horizontally and vertically in arbitraty positioning, including the display of isolines of field strength (V/m); For power lines, an embedd model considering curvature between pilons is used.
6. Optional import, analysis, and display of external third-party tools (including 2D and 3D ray tracing models) results and data.

Objects can be grouped, ranked, and selected based on any selection and range of attributes (e.g., all sources in a given community, belnging to a specific operator, or above a certain size/strength, etc.), or geographically, i.e., within arbitrary polygons (like community or any administrative boundaries), within buffers of various shapes (e.g., circular, corridor).

Basic descriptive statistics including graphs such as histograms are available for the benchmarking of any set of sources, using any or all of its attributes.

The generic model interface supports the import, visualization and analysis of the models' output 2D/3D grid files, and it includes basic model integration (interactive file selection and import functions)

Post-processing functions of the model results include population exposure estimation (interactive overlay analysis of model result grids and population data overaly) several spatially distributed and non-linear impact functions as well as rule-based assessment of impacts, and statistical analysis.

Implementation
RiskWare/NIR is implemented as a client-server system running on powerful, scaleable Linux server for the highest levels of reliability and security, and uses an Apache web server for Internet support.

The system uses a relational data base engine like ORACLE (8i), MySQL or PostgreSQL and can import and process GIS data from numerous external sources and formats including ArcInfo/ArcView.

The system can support PC based clients on a LAN, or remote clients on the Internet, the latter with a standard web browser for access.

While designed as a distributed client-server system, RiskWare/NIR can also be implemented on a sufficiently powerful laptop PC (under Linux) for mobile use.