Project Participants: ESS GmbH, Austria

Environmental Software & Services GmbH
Kalkgewerk 1, PO Box 100 A-2352 Gumpoldskirchen
Tel: ++43 2252 63305 Fax: ++43 2252 633059 AUSTRIA

Contacts: Kurt Fedra kurt@ess.co.at

Gabriela Heimhilcher admin@ess.co.at

Environmental Software & Services GmbH (ESS), is acting as technical and scientific project coordinator, and contribute the modeling and optimization tools, be responsible for their integration and implementation, support the case studies in their modeling tasks, and also contribute to the decision analysis work package

Environmental Software & Services GmbH (ESS) was founded in 1995 as a direct continuation of the Advanced Computer Applications (ACA) project of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria. The primary mission of ESS is to bring the best available scientific knowledge to bear on environmental planning management, and policy problems, using state-of-the-art information technology. ESS designs, develops, and deploys customized environmental information systems, and provides training and continuing support worldwide. The company's high-performance simulation and optimisation models, GIS, and expert systems integrated in distributed client-server architecture with a multi-media user interface and Internet/Intranet support are the main products for environmental management applications. In addition to its work for numerous institutional and industrial clients world wide, ESS has been participating in a number of research projects in the 4th and 5th Framework, notably in the INCO-DC Program with GAIA, an environmental information system based on Agenda 21 for sustainable development (as coordinator), in the Environmental Telematics project ECOSIM (as coordinator) on Urban Environmental Management, and in the EECD project SUTRA (as coordinator) on sustainable urban development.

ESS has also worked as the main systems architect and developer for the EUREKA EUROENVIRON 476 project, with subsequent applications of the WaterWare river basin management information system in Mexico, Palestine, and Malaysia, and currently in the INCO-MED project SMART with applications in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Tunisia.

Team members

Kurt Fedra, Ph.D., Dr.sci.,
is Director of Environmental Software & Services GmbH (ESS-ACA). From 1985 to 1995 he has been the leader of the Advanced Computer Applications (ACA) Project at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA).
DDr. Fedra received his Ph.D. in biology from the University of Vienna and a Doctorate of Science from the University of Geneva. He has spent a post-doctoral year (environmental and water resources engineering) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Boston, USA. He is an expert in environmental systems analysis and information technology, and the author of more than 100 articles and reports, and has contributed to numerous books on environmental systems analysis and related computer applications. He has also been teaching Environmental Systems Analysis at several universities world-wide, and currently at the Technical University of Vienna.

Dr. Gabriela Heimhilcher
holds a doctorate in Biology from the University of Vienna, and has worked in the area of ecology and applied entomology (Federal Institute for Plant Protection, Vienna). She was worked for several years in the domain of water related projects.
Dr. Heimhilcher has also worked in SMART, a recently completed pre-cursor project on Mediterranean water resources and coastal zone management. In OPTIMA, in addition to data compilation and research tasks, she is working on the project administration and the scientific and linguistic editing of reports and deliverables.

Dr. Christina Witwer
holds a Dr.rer.nat. in theoretical biochemistry from the University of Vienna, and has been a post-doctoral fellow at the Institute of theoretical chemistry and molecular structural biology, University of Vienna, working on algorithms for RNA secondary structure prediction.
Dr. Witwer has mode than 10 years of working experience in in the field of life sciences and bio-informatics, and has studies mathematics besides her primary studies and research in chemistry. She is working on large, distributed client server environmental simulation systems.

Dr. Maja Zuvela-Aloise
holds a Dipl.Ing. degree in physics from the University of Zagreb, Croatia, Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, and a doctorate in physical oceanography from the University of Kiel, Germany. She has worked for several years at the DFG research unit Ocean Gateways at the Institute of Geosciences, Kiel, Germany and has been a visiting scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, University of Columbia, New York.
In OPTIMA, Dr. Zuvela-Aloise is primarily working on the water quality model STREAM, wastewater treatment model representation, the economic assessment and the optimization framework for the water quality aspects of the case studies.

Milan Kubat, Dr.tech.
holds degrees in Technical Cybernetics (Dresden) and Computer Sciences (Prague). He works as a senior analyst and software designer on topics such as spatial analysis, optimization, or artificial intelligence over a broad range of environmental application domains. Dr. Kubat has been working as a research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, IIASA, in Laxenburg, Austria, in the Advanced Computer Applications group.
In OPTIMA, Dr. Kubat is working on several simulation models, the optimization framework and multi-criteria DSS tools, as well as the embedded GIS functionality and data processing in support of the individual case studies.

Franz Karrer has been studying computer sciences and artificial intelligence at the University of Vienna. He has been a systems and applications programmer for Siemens, Erlangen, Germany, working on topics of medical informatics and information systems.
In OPTIMA, Mr. Karrer is working on a range of model and data base issues, scenario management, monitoring data and system integration.
Maria Garcia Rosa
graduated in environmental sciences from the University of Estremadura, Spain. She is currently working as a Leonardo da Vinci guest scholar on the OPTIMA project, primarily ion data compilation and analysis for the case studies in support of the model applications.

Maria del Pilar Ortiz Barragan
graduated in environmental sciences from the University of Estremadura, Spain. She is currently working as a Leonardo da Vinci guest scholar on the OPTIMA project, primarily ion data compilation and analysis for the case studies in support of the model applications.

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