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