Environmental Modelling and Simulation Research
by Achim Sydow
Information technology has played an increasing role in the planning
and controlling of environmental issues at different scales and within
various time spans. It has been a long journey from the establishment of
ecology as a science dealing with the relations of organisms to their environment
(Haeckel, 1866) and the definition of the concept of ecosystems (Tansley,
1935), to the development of our field of computational ecology. Rapid
developments in information technology made the establishment of computational
ecology possible and continue to accompany our research endeavours.
Environmental systems consisting of geophysical and geochemical elements,
abiotic factor complexes (atmosphere, hydrosphere, pedosphere) and biotic
elements (growth processes, population dynamics) are real complex systems.
Information technology has succeeded in developing adequate tools for modelling,
simulation, planning and decision support for environmental protection.
As a result, education aimed toward transmitting an understanding of environmental
systems is nowadays unthinkable without the use of computer techniques.
Considerable progress has been reached in a number of different research
areas:
- in theoretical areas, the use of High Performance Computing simulation
has brought spectacular results in systems dynamics (evolution strategies,
logistic growth, chaos research)
- in climate research, the long term analysis of global change
- in economics and ecology, the considerations of sustainable development
- in mathematics, the development of powerful algorithms for integration
and decomposition methods for parallelization.
Interdisciplinary co-operation has benefited from computer networking.
Parallel computation greatly assists in the efficient analysis of large
scale and complex environmental systems. Weather and ozone forecasts are
based on parallel computation. Visualization techniques allow comprehensive
overviews and thus assist decision support. Simulation gives numerical
insight into the behaviour of complex environmental systems. Intelligent
information technologies (neuronal nets, evolution strategies, expert systems)
support modelling should relevant background structures from the natural
sciences be unavailable. These information technologies can also assist
data mining. Algorithms for optimization and poly-optimization provide
a helpful aid for dealing with conflict situations which can evolve between
the areas of ecology, economics and the needs of society.
The articles in this issue of ERCIM-News reflect the wide range of research
and applications conducted within the ERCIM community in the field of environmental
modelling and simulation:
- analysis of regional systems
- climate research
- air pollution modelling
- water pollution modelling
- modelling of natural resources
- modelling of traffic systems
- methods for modelling and optimization
- mathematical methods, partial differential equations
- simulation tools
- environmental risk management
- data management
- data mining
- visualization
- intelligent cartography.
The ERCIM working group Environ-mental Modelling provides a platform
for the discussion of results in this area and promotes further research.
In addition to national research programmes the European Commission is
actively supporting this research.
Please contact:
Achim Sydow - GMD
Working Group chairman
Tel: +49 30 6392 1813
E-mail: sydow@first.gmd.de
