Vision of Air Quality Management System

Bitta J., Jančík P., Umlauf M.
VŠB - Technical University
17. listopadu, 708 33 Ostrava-Poruba
tel.: +420597324324
E-mail: miroslav.umlauf.hgf@vsb.cz

Abstract

Human society significantly influences the Earth's environment. Not thinking about effects of human deeds can cause serious harms. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution the quality of the atmosphere had become negatively affected by the pollution caused by the usage of new technologies as well as simultaneous growth of population density in city agglomerations. The situation became unsustainable in the second half of 20th century by both massive destruction of environment, human health problems and even deaths caused by polluted air. That's why governmental authorities together with media and even common citizens started to be increasingly interested of the air quality and possibilities of its improvement. Today, there are a law conditions which set up pollution limits for a number of pollutants and also allow the governmental authorities to do an active management of air quality. Possibilities of this management are now strictly limited by the lack of support tools which would ease and confirm decisions. Suitable solution of this problem would be a GIT based expert system which would be used for air quality monitoring, assessment of current status and for formulating and studying of "what if" scenarios.

Present status

By now, the governmental authorities a law based licence to air quality management but there is a severe lack of a complex system which would give decision makers enough information for their decisions. Practical realisation of this system has some serious problems.

The most difficult task is the input data acquisition. The data of industrial sources are administered by Czech Hydro-Meteorological Institute (CHMI). This data are possible to get only two or more years old and in relational database which doesn't follow standards. That's why it is not suitable for an expert system. Data about non-industrial sources are not collected, so the only info about it are only the census and the traffic intensity studies made once per 5 or more years. Another problem is a sparse network of monitoring stations (also CHMI) which allows only coarse notion of air quality and meteorological conditions.

More info about imissions of pollutants is now possible to get by mathematical modelling. Interconnection of GIT, mathematical models and supercomputers. Unique Czech (and probably world) system which would be eligible to become an air quality expert system covering large areas with high detail of imissions is the ADMOSS (Analytical Dispersion MOdelling Supercomputer System) now developed in LabGIS of VŠB-TUO. It uses:

A great progress has been made in this problematic during last few years, mainly in GIS - mathematical model connection. But the system is not still fully automatic.

Basic vision of the expert system

System possibilities

System solution

The expert system would be established of three servers:

The system will contain two simply controllable client interfaces:

Moreover we foresee a development of a cheap monitoring "microstations" measuring both meteorological and imission data. That would allow establishing much thicker network of air quality monitoring. This would extensively help with modelling improvement and verification. Next help would be a possible use of artificial inteligence (neural network) which would rapidly increase calculations.

Conclusion

This system would allow a full scale air quality management. It would produce a high quality data to ease decision making which is by now very difficult. It would make possible to protect human health and natural environment more effectively and precisely then it is possible today.