Development of an Integrated Environmental Monitoring and Simulation
System
by Peter Mieth, Matthias L. Jugel, Steffen Unger and Bertram Walter
The project ECOSIM (Ecological and environmental monitoring and simulation
system for management decision support in urban areas) will provide a prototype
for an integrated environmental monitoring and simulation system. It integrates,
through a distributed client/server architecture data acquisition from
an on-site environmental monitoring network, data analysis and visualization
tools, a range of numerical simulation models of different complexity to
assess the air, the marine water and groundwater quality after releases
of pollutants, and an embedded expert system. ECOSIM is a European cooperation
project funded by the European Commission within the Telematics Applications
Programme.
The ECOSIM system builds on a set of sophisticated state-of-the-art
simulation models (eg air chemistry models). It exploits existing knowledge
in environmental management by connecting these models with an advanced
Geographical Information System (GIS), on-line monitoring networks, local
databases, and an embedded expert system.
This allows eg a direct link between the models, up to-date measurements
of current meteorological conditions, and actual pollutant background concentrations.
ECOSIM is also able to consider different environmental domains such as
air, surface water, and coastal water to ensure an analysis as complete
as possible.
The following simulation models are presently implemented into the ECOSIM
system:
- the non-hydrostatic, prognostic, grid-based, (Eulerian) mesoscale 3D
windfield model MEMO
- the dispersion and air chemistry part of the DYMOS system (Dynamic
Models for Smog Analysis), responsible for the advective transport, turbulent
diffusion and surface uptake of the air pollutants
- the mesoscale ozone forecast model REGOZON
- the modular, finite-difference based 3D ground water model MODFLOW-96
- the prognostic 3D ocean model POM, responsible for the temperature-,
velocity-, and salinity distribution in shallow water as well as in deep
ocean domains.
The ECOSIM system integrates data acquisition
and monitoring systems, GIS, and dynamic simulation models in a flexible
client-server architecture. In general, the different model components
run at different locations on different computers. They are connected via
Internet and controlled by a main server located at the user's office.
The simulation results can be visualized on the server as well as on any
remote client's platform.
ECOSIM Applications
Besides GMD Institute for Computer Architecture and Software Technology,
Berlin, ECOSIM involves participants from Austria, Greece, Italy and Poland.
ECOSIM will be developed and tested in close collaboration with three city
authorities with differing environmental problems and state-of-the-art
approaches to environmental management. ECOSIM will be used within the
city of Berlin, Germany, to provide an improved method for modelling the
level of ozone which depends mainly on traffic emissions.
For the city of Athens, Greece, similar problems will be addressed as
well as the interplay between surface and ground water and coastal pollution.
ECOSIM will also be applied in a more limited manner in the city of Gdansk,
Poland.
More information about ECOSIM is available at http://www.first.gmd.de/applications/proj/ecosim_more.html
Please contact:
Peter Mieth - GMD
Tel: +49 30 6392 1819
E-mail: mieth@first.gmd.de
