ABSTRACT

The paper secondly aims to indicate the large scope of tasks to be undertaken for setting up a standard application for the MERP and its regional authorities. It is illustrated how the ESRI products provide a reliable basis for GIS processing of related data. The Integrated GIS of the Ministry was funded by the Phare European Community assistance programme, and was implemented within the framework of a combined project. The development of the integrated GIS was preceded by a number of related projects including the acquisition and improvement of hardware equipment, the implementation of basic softwares as well as digitised topographic maps serving as the basis for installing the related application. The Arc-Info/Arcview/Oracle environment was selected for realisation of the project in a client-server architecture. It is composed of three sub-systems as follows: environmental protection, nature conservation, and a register. The system serves as an inventory for analysis, modelling and decisionmaking concerning the issues of environmental protection and nature conservation.

Thirdly, the paper offers a brief outlook and indicates the importance of collaborating with data owners, communicating information to the public on the state of the environment, and what can integrated environmental and economic information systems mean from the environmental stakeholders' point of view.

LEGAL FRAMEWORKS AT INTERNATIONAL AND NATIONAL LEVEL

EU-Legislation

• 94/808/EC Council Decision of 15 December 1994 adopting a 4-year development programme (1994-1997) relating to the environmental component of community statistics (under constant renewal);
• Council Regulation (EEC) 1210/90 of 7 May 1990 on the establishment of the European Environment Agency and the European Environment Information and Observation Network of the Council of the European Communities (modification is under preparation);
• 93/464/EEC Council Decision of 22 July 1993 on the framework programme for priority actions in the field of statistical information 1993 to 1997 (renewal is constant);
• 85/338/EEC Council Decision of 27 June 1985 on the adoption of the Commission work programme concerning an experimental project for gathering, coordinating and ensuring the consistency of information on the state of the environment and natural resources in the Community;
• Practical Steps towards the implementation of the Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament on Directions for the European Union on Environmental Indicators and Green National Accounting (COM(94)670 final).

Hungarian Legislation

• Cabinet Decree of 2339/1996. (XII. 6.) on the Tasks of the Development of an Environmental Information System in the Field of Environmental Statistics.
  Following an earlier Cabinet Decree, environmental data systems were overviewed from an OECD and EU requirement point of view, and a proposal prepared for the Government on the development of an environmental information system which (in the framework of the Integrated Environmental and Economic Information System):
  • is able to merge environmental data systems;
  • can relate human activities, the state of the environment and societal responses, and target areas of environmental policy;
  • combine results in an environmental-economic database which can provide valuable usable information for decisionmaking, environmental policy, and the general public.

  In the Annex to this Decree, an implementation plan was included which covered a 6-year period, and aims to seek the improvement and satisfaction of OECD/EU data demands, in harmony with Hungarian tendencies and objctives. In order to perform these tasks, it is necessary to develop both the field of statistics and the other components of the environmental information system. The huge amounts of basic data that constitute environmental statistics come from outside statistical sources such as environmental monitoring and measurement systems, scientific experiments, and different kinds of inventories etc. It is necessary to ensure this development becomes inseparable from the technical and methodological evolution of data collection and information systems.

• National Statistical Survey Programme (NSSP)
  This Programme is updated annually by a Government Order. Within the NSSP, there are several environment-related data collections (direct or indirect) supervised by the National Statistical Office and Ministries.

• Act LIII of 1995 on the General Rules of Environmental Protection
  This Act contains three sections that deal with environmental information systems and the provision of information (see Annex for detail).

MERP STRATEGY FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION SYSTEM IN HUNGARY

• First, a national centre linked to well-equipped regional centres within regional authorities should be established (to this end a pilot project financed by Phare was launched and completed in 1996, see below for further detail).

• Secondly, the national centre should serve as a repository of all central databases and main contact points to the international community. In Hungary, this contact point is represented by the UNEP/GRID Budapest office that was inaugurated in April 1997.

• Thirdly, institutional settings should be seen in relation to information systems and procedures already in use, or planned by other ministries and other relevant organisations, and institutes.

Figure 1. Shell-structure of environment-related data owners and users

SETTING UP STANDARD APPLICATIONS: A CASE STUDY

Preliminary Concepts

The large scope of the task required sophisticated preparatory work. Its main aspects included;

• The detailed examination of systems and applications available prior to the project;
• Determination of priority issues to be handled by the new application;
• Definition of the optimum balance between priorities to be solved and the funding available;
• Preparation and announcement of tenders for the realisation of projects.

Implementation

Therefore, the highest priority of this project was the implementation of an integrated system according to the instructions defined during the system design, and that would serve to provide substantial help in the daily routine work of the staff of the authorities.

The main objective of the development and installation of the Integrated GIS was to elaborate an information system with GIS functionality efficiently supporting both official and scientific fields of activity within the authorities, and providing the best possible support for their requirements concerning the collection, processing and analysis of data.

Given the finite amount of financial assistance, the most cost-effective solution for implementing a system at all sites had to be considered. The best option was to set up an information centre at each of the agencies involved with the MERP. These were the so-called Thematic Information Centres (TICs) suggested to serve as pilot sites equipped with a high level hardware and software that can also be regarded as models for other authorities.

Those TICs selected for environmental protection were based in the vicinity of Lake Balaton. The Central Transdanubia Authority (Székesfehérvár) together with two other regional authorities are responsible for environmental quality in the Balaton catchment area. Such tasks require the collection, processing and analysis of a huge amount of data using data assets in a unified, integrated system. The TIC for nature conservation is based in the Hortobágy region because of the considerable value of sites and species living in the area, and staff experiences in digital processing of nature conservation data.

Within the framework of a related project, different scales of topographic maps have been digitised. Those features to be captured and attributes to be processed were defined by the MERP. The processing of data proceeded according to the traditional methods of obtaining clean line-work, linking attributes, and eventually, processing topology. Features having a common boundary were processed as regions. Data sets are provided in Arc/Info format.

Systems Integration

Two major aspects of the development of the system have to be emphasised: satisfying the requirements of cooperation needs with other authorities, while the functionalities of the application developed must be accessible for other regional authorities.

Environmental Protection

• Improvement of environmental data capture;
• Advanced handling of environmental data;
• Complex interpretation and statistical analysis of environmental data;
• Ensuring the handling of georeferencing data;
• Supporting decisions on environmental rehabilitation by improving the accessibility of data needed;
• Taking official measures based on reliable assessments, and;
• Improvement of public awareness concerning the environment through more efficient dissemination of environmental information.

The professional data systems to be integrated into the sub-system of environmental protection are as follows:

• EMIR (Information System for Air Emission);
• VEHUR/HAWIS (Hazardous Waste Information System);
• VIFIR (Hydrogeological Information System);
• VM (Water Quality Data Management and Distributing System);
• SzFKAT (Cadastre of Sewage Water Sources);
• SHATIR (Computer-based Hydrological Data Processing, Storage and Information Distribution System);
• ZAJ (Noise).

To develop a system ensuring the integration and integrated analysis of the above professional systems, three major tasks had to be tackled (the solutions selected are in parenthesis in italics):

• The systems were developed using different software and therefore had different data structures, and where an immense amount of tables and data to be handled (300 and 1500, respectively), had to be integrated into one unified system. (Their full integration was realised through their import from dBase into Oracle tables using FoxPro applications);
• Objects representing legal entities (e.g. companies) had different identifiers in different sub-systems. In order to ensure simultaneous query of different kinds of pollution discharged by the same object a uniform identifier system was needed. (The problem of integrating object identifiers was handled through elaborating several interrelated registry tables with a fundamental "table of objects" register. This provides every object with a unique identifier and registers their X, Y, Z co-ordinates for spatial representation).
• In order to present the results of queries and statistical analysis of data on maps the related objects have to be georeferenced (Georeferencing of the objects can be made by entering the coordinates directly into the table of objects register or registered indirectly through the georeferencing tool of the application using a special on-screen georeferencing technique).

Nature Conservation

• Module of taxonomy;
• Module of nature conservation areas;
• Background data for nature conservation;
• Module of biological observation;
• Land management system, and;
• Forest management system.

Integration of the above sub-systems allows the spatial analysis of the relationship between different kinds of pollution records discharged by objects and biological observation data. This analysis can be realised within the nature conservation sub-system. It begins with the selection of the appropriate Oracle View set up and represents the result of the query made in the environment protection sub-system. Loaded onto a map within the nature conservation sub-system, it can be associated with the result of a query concerning biological observation data through thematic overlay/logical queries. The result can be illustrated in the nature conservation sub-system.

EIONET LINKS

Nevertheless, it is necessary to bring together data owners, data providers, and data communicators in a continuous process at both the national and international level. These two levels share different data requirements, however, we should also take into consideration the needs of the general public, and decisionmakers and policymakers when disseminating information. It is obvious that different levels of data aggregation are necessary to satisfy information demand. Therefore, it is very important to know what is the future perspective and the evolution of information users' demands. We can evidently stimulate this process using new developments both in computer techniques such as networking, and in the systematisation of our knowledge as indicators for different types of frameworks (e.g. OECD's PSR model or EU's DPSIR model).

Environmental Indicators and National Accounting

The European Union has made such a joint project one of the "quasi-constitutional" cornerstones of its identity. It must therefore give itself the right tools for the job that describes a framework and program, common to all the Member States of the EU, for setting up a linked set of environmental indicators and national accounts.

A conceptual framework was founded on the basis of the EU directly related to the 5th Environmental Action Programme, giving priority to measuring the impact of economic activity on the environment, and describing the costs and effects of measures designed to improve that impact.

A programme comprising stages linked one to another, from the creation of the basic indicators to their incorporation into an accounting framework consistent with the major macro-economic aggregates, aimed to optimise cooperation between the Member States and between Eurostat and the European Environment Agency.

Rather than proceeding to the modification of national accounts in order to calculate a greened GNP, the creation of a separate framework is proposed for the establishment of an environmental-economic information system. This system would be the result of two complementary approaches:

• 'Satellite' accounts alongside national accounts and closely linked to them, some in physical and some in monetary terms, that will themselves provide a powerful analytical tool and in which the new concepts can be tested;
• The calculation of physical indicators and indices related to the pressures of human and economic activities on the environment.

Even if progress in these two directions differs in their time scale, they should lead to a common database on the physical environment covering the main policy areas. Such a database could not be produced without strong collaboration with national institutes in the Member and EU Accession States, besides cooperation with international organisations.

The Commission splits its work programme into six strongly interrelated actions which have to be undertaken in close coordination:

• Creating a handbook on Green Accounting;
• Developing a European System of Environmental Pressure Indices;
• Developing Integrated Environmental and Economic Indices (see Figure 2);
• Developing Environmental Satellite Accounts;
• Research on damage evaluation and monetisation techniques;
• Ensuring horizontal co-ordination.

The first and the last actions are of a more coordinatory and managerial nature. The cornerstones are the second through to the fifth actions.

Figure 2. The European System of Integrated Environmental and Economic Indices

The integration of the environmental and economic considerations taking the form of Environmental Indices and Satellite Accounts lead to a comprehensive system that is not only understandable by experts but by the general public too. One main advantage of the integrated system proposed will be its possible extension to other aspects such as unemployment, social and health considerations. The other benefit of the system is that it can provide aggregated and detailed information about cause-effect chains between human activities and the environment. The production of different kinds of reports on the state of the environment should be based upon this integrated system because it is able to manage data coming from both private and state-owned business sectors together with data on environmental conditions. The environmental reporting activities must be extended to the business sector on a voluntary basis to assess the environmental performance of economic players.

ANNEX

"Section 49

1. The Minister shall establish and operate a monitoring network, the National Environmental Information System ... for the monitoring of the state and use of the environment, and the measurement, collection, processing and registration of data on the utilisation and loading thereof.".
2. The Information System shall be organised and set up in such a manner and with such a territorial density that on the basis thereof
   1. the changes in the utilisation, loading and the state of the environment can be determined quantitatively and qualitatively and can be compared internationally - in a form that can also be evaluated together with social and economic relationships and from the aspect of the impacts on the health of the population;
   2. the causes of the environmental impacts can be established with satisfactory accuracy (including also detailed breakdowns required for the establishment of the causal relationships of the damage);
   3. the hazards posed to the environment can be recognised as early as possible;
   4. the regulatory responsibilities can be fulfilled and the official measures can be taken by the authorities;
   5. it can be used for planning.
3. The regional tasks necessary for the operation of the Information System shall be fulfilled by the regional environmental protection authority [Section 65, subsection (1), paragraph a)].
4. The costs of data provision, as specified in legal rules, shall be borne by the party obligated to provide the data concerning the impacts on the environment.

Section 50

1. Users of the environment shall measure the environmental loading and the utilisation of the environment caused during its activities in a manner specified in legal rules, or shall substantiate and register it with technological calculations, and shall make its records available and/or shall provide data to the authorities with jurisdiction and competence.
2. The organs of local governments and the state responsible for environmental protection shall make the data they obtained and necessary for the Information System available to the Information System, in accordance with the contents of government decrees.

Section 51

1. The findings of studies funded from the state budget and pertaining to the state, the utilisation and the use of the environment shall be treated in accordance with the legal rules on data of public interest.
2. On the basis of the data collection, the Minister shall submit a report annually to the Government on the trends in the state of the environment in the country.
3. Municipal local governments shall inform the population about the trends in the state of the local environment as required, but at least annually."