COSIMA - A Support Tool for Experts in Contaminated Site Management

Arthur Hutchinson and Barry Doyle
Stephen Court, ESBIC Ltd., 18/21 St. Stephen's Green, Dublin2, IR

BACKGROUND

Objective: Develop an integrated, GIS-based tool to support environmental and planning experts in contaminated site management.
Main Partners: Stadt Koln (Coordinator), Cork Corporation, SEABO - Societa energia ambiente Bologna (Public Utility of the City and Province of Bologna), and Milieudienst Amsterdam.
Associated Partners: Commune di Bologna, Miasta Katowice, ESBI Computing Limited, ESRI Germany GmbH
Duration: January 1996 - September 1998
Programme: Telematics Application Programme, Environment Telematics, DG XIII.

OVERVIEW

Europe lies today in the cradle of industrialisation, and as a result, many European cities find themselves facing serious problems of soil and groundwater contamination. Industrial production has continued for decades without attention to environmental impact, while extensive rearmament in post-World War II Europe has resulted in severe ecological problems, especially in the area of soil and groundwater contamination.

Unidentified contaminated sites represent a considerable danger for the environment, flora and fauna. Moreover, for the affected population it poses a threat, particularly in the case of residential areas, and where groundwater is used for drinking water. Considering the constant growth in urban agglomerations, it is necessary to reuse historic industrial sites rather than develop new sites, in order to avoid further urban sprawl and to protect existing green areas and biotypes.

Excepting environmental considerations, soil contamination is an essential aspect of urban planning and development. Shortage of land on the one hand, and increasing competition among European cities and regions concerning industrial sites and inward investment on the other, make land availability a key issue on the agenda of many European Cities. Therefore contaminated site management is of vital importance for European cities and regions, not only for ecological, but also for economic reasons.

USER NEEDS AND END-USERS

Despite it's importance, the issue of contaminated sites has to date played a secondary role in environmental politics compared with other areas such as air pollution. Accordingly, the technological instruments used by the sector are not state-of-the-art, and the range of tools is restricted, leaving the evaluation of contaminated sites to be carried out manually, implying an enormous loss of time and public money.

There are a number of "expert systems" available which provide solutions for specific applications, but they neither offer enough flexibility, nor do they correspond with the scope of contaminated sites management. As the future users of the COSIMA system are contaminated sites experts themselves, they do not need an "expert system" to provide solutions. What they require is a system that supports work flows and the decisionmaking process, as well as the ability to handle enormous quantities of data and the methodology applied by the user. Thus, there is not only an urgent need for the automation of work flows, but moreover, a strong requirement for an integrated technological solution which considers the multiple aspects of contaminated sites management.

The COSIMA project addresses this market need. Its objectives are the development and implementation of a GIS-based system that assists environmental, planning and other experts in identifying, registering, assessing and remediating sites which may have been contaminated. The system is designed to implement standards for data structure, data integration and to present of database and geographical information. It is implemented using existing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in participating cities and their institutions.

Using such a system, combined with standard relational database management systems (RDBMS), a uniform data model and harmonised presentation model for contaminated site management has been developed. Furthermore, existing data processing infrastructures are being integrated into the system.

Modern telematics structures and GIS systems allow the use of distributed databases, enabling each user to maintain his own data, while permitting access by other users and organisations. Development of communication technologies, storage capacities of CD-ROMs and optical disks, as well as improved speed of data access and transfer allow practical, cost-efficient access to Binary Large Objects (BLOBS) - e.g. raster images, scanned documents, photographs, etc. The high interoperability and standardisation potential of the system has allowed the integration of the Contaminated Sites Management Support System (CSMSS) as one module into a comprehensive environmental information system as currently established or projected in all COSIMA cities.

The distinctive character of this consortium is that it is led by the local (and provincial) authorities in their capacity as technology users. At each development step, the expert staff from the authorities in charge of contaminated sites management define the requirements for the technical work to be conducted by the industrial partners. The technical development is continuously controlled, assessed and tested by the future users of the CSMSS. Thus, permanent and coherent quality assurance is guaranteed.

Furthermore, the project is characterised by a harmonised approach among the partners towards development, i.e. the consortium jointly develop the core elements, notably the data model, the presentation model and the user interface. Therefore, the technological concept is basically the same in all cities, and only technical realisation differs due to the different technological degrees of infrastructure.

The following authorities are the end-users of the system developed within the COSIMA project.

The COSIMA project has a 3 year timeframe, which started in January 1996. It was officially launched at a consortium assembly in Cork, Ireland on 25 January 1996. By signing an "Agreement of Co-operation," the mayors and official representatives of the Cities of Amsterdam, Bologna, Cologne and Cork expressed their strong commitment and support to this trans-European collaboration.

TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION

The software partners, in direct association with their partner cities, undertake the development of the application. This was divided up into the number of Work Packages shown below.

WP No. Work Package Name
0 Harmonisation of Terminology
1 Analysis of User Needs
2 System Architecture
4 Uniform Data Model
5 Harmonised Presentation Model
6 Data Processing Infrastructure
7 Development of User Interfaces

The interdependency between the work packages can be seen in Figure 1 below.

figure 1

Figure 1. CSMSS Concept

System Concept

The objective of COSIMA is to develop a Computerised Sites Management Support System (CSMSS) using the expert knowledge of environmental personnel, planners and IT/DP personnel from the participating cities. The system will be integrated within the partner city's existing GIS technology, and will access spatial and non-spatial data sets distributed across existing local and wide area networks. The decisionmaker thus has a user-friendly GIS based decision support tool that facilitates the querying of information associated with a contaminated site. The decisionmaker will be provided with the necessary tools to:

CSMSS-data sources include:

Conceptual Overview of the Contaminated Sites Management Support System (CSMSS)

The potential users of the final system can be classified into three types.

  1. Decisionmakers who will use the system to safeguard human health and the natural built environment, including planners, environmental officers, engineers and city real estate agents;
  2. Systems experts who will manage, support and maintain the COSIMA System, including applications experts, network experts, and database administration experts;
  3. The product has the option of providing public domain data to the casual user who will have simple user-friendly tools to access this. This, however, is outside the scope of the project.

figure 2

Figure 2: Conceptual overview of the CSMSS

Requirements of the CSMSS

The requirements of the system can be broadly divided into 3 categories:

  1. Introductory Requirements;
  2. Functional Requirements;
  3. Non-functional requirements.

Introductory Requirements

Functional Requirements

Non-Functional Requirements

Risk Assessment Methodology

The methodology developed by the partner-cities involves a risk analysis of the site in question (see Figure 3 below). It involves an initial evaluation of the history of the site by examining old maps, aerial photographs and archival records as to the previous use of the site. If the results of the initial investigation indicate that a risk may exist, the investigation moves to the screening phase.

Screening Phase

In the Screening Phase, the decision is made as to what is required to be investigated and how. This phase consists of three steps:

  1. Programme of Testing;
  2. Actual testing;
  3. Evaluation of test results and risk analysis.

If after the Screening Phase, the site is found to be a possible risk and further examination of the extent of the contamination is needed, then the investigation moves to the detailed investigation stage.

figure 3

Figure 3. Site Examination Strategy.

Investigation Stage

This phase also consists of three stages:

  1. Planning a programme of testing;
  2. Carrying out tests which will establish the extent of the area contaminated and the levels of contamination;
  3. Evaluation of test results.

Based on the results of the detailed examination, an expert evaluation is carried out and a decision on the necessity to remediate is taken. Where remediation is necessary, the levels of remediation for the contaminant are established and after remediation, these are checked before any further on-site development is allowed.

System Design and Utilisation

The COSIMA database was designed with the input of all city partners in identifying all objects and data necessary for comprehensive site management. This led to the creation of the Universal Data Model. This is the core element in the system and the "S-Designor" package was used to design the Conceptual Model using the E-R diagram method. This led to the creation of four interlinked data submodels including:

Table 1 shows the relationship between the sub-models and the site examination strategy.

Sub-model Site Examination Strategy Phase
1. Main Data Initial Phase
Risk Analysis/ Initial Evaluation		 I, II
2. Site Information Risk Analysis/ Initial Evaluation II
3. Measurement Risk Analysis/Examinations
Remediation 		II, IV
4. Knowledge Risk Analysis, Assessment, Remediation II, III, IV

Table 1. Relationship between sub-models and site examination strategy

The decisionmaker accesses this information through a client GIS based application. The city's corporate GIS is used as the underlying GIS, and an enhanced set of GIS based tools are developed to deal specifically with contaminated sites. A client workstation is located in each of the city's relevant departments, with access to the server via a local or wide area network.

The city's system administrator manages updates to the system, and procedures are developed to streamline and validate data entry.

System Architecture

Below is a diagram describing the system architecture of the COSIMA application. Between the graphical user interface (GUI) and the data access to heterogenous data sources, the GIS engine provides a common interface for access to geodata: the "Defined Layers". It is an abstraction layer between a physical data format and functionality. Functionality with respect to access, display and query is independant from the data sources format. With "defined layers," it is only necessary to implement the functionality in the CSMSS-GUI once, and the same analysis can be performed regardless of the data source's format.

Below are screen-shot examples of the COSIMA system.

figure 4

Figure 4. system architecture

Site Data can be crossed checked with Standards:

figure 5

Figure 5. Thematic analysis of measurement data

figure 6

Figure 6. Measurement point details - soil sample data

figure 7

Figure 7. Site Location Map overlaid with historical information

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