REC * PROGRAMS * TELEMATICS * ENWAP
Mr. Jernej Stritih, Executive Director of the REC, welcomed the participants and introduced briefly the REC's activities.
The Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (REC) is an independent, non profit, regional organization devoted to the improvement of the environment in Central and Eastern Europe. The REC was established in 1990 by the United States, Hungary and the Commission of the European Communities. Additional donors include Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland. The REC's mission is to assist in solving the environmental problems in Central and Eastern Europe by encouraging cooperation among non governmental organizations, governments, businesses, and other environmental stakeholders, by supporting the free exchange of information and by promoting public participation in environmental decision making.
Beneficiary countries include Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, FYR Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and FR Yugoslavia.
In addition to its head office in Szentendre, Hungary, (which was donated by the Hungarian Ministry of Environment), the REC has local offices in Belgrade, Bratislava, Budapest, Bucharest, Ljubljana, Prague, Riga, Sarajevo, Skopje, Sofia, Tallinn, Tirana, Vilnius, Warsaw and Zagreb.
The programme activities of REC consisted of four demand-driven programme areas: grants to support the institutional development of NGOs and their capacity to increase public participation in environmental issues; information exchange to provide public access to environmental information and to facilitate networking among diverse interest groups; REC initiatives to assess and share regional experiences in addressing crucial environmental issues; fellowships and internships to provide networking and training opportunities to promising individuals. All these programs are unified in promoting regional cooperation and building the capacity of stakeholders to solve environmental problems.
Mr. Wolfgang Boch, Head of Sector, Environment, DGXIII, welcomed the audience remarking the participation of a wide range of different users. His presentation started with an introduction of the TAP (Telematics Applications Programme) in the Environment Sector of the 4th Framework Programme. The key features of the TAP projects were characterized by the "ten commandments":
Different approaches have been investigated to link with other activities of RTD, to disseminate telematics solutions to other developed countries, to stimulate partnerships, and to link with European legislation on environmental issues. The TAP-EN Programme has ÒdrivenÓ innovations primarily from the application point of view, largely exploiting existing state-of-art technology.
A brief introduction of the 5th Framework Programme was also given. The Framework Programme is articulated in thematic and horizontal themes and the IST (Information Society Technology) Ñ Environment action will establish a follow-up to the existing TAP-EN action. To ease the submission of proposals, a rolling plan of calls will be established with more frequent calls and more flexibility, and annual updates of workplans involved. Besides the IST theme the other three main themes are Life Sciences, Environment & Energy, and Competitive and Sustainable Growth. The general objectives in the IST Programme are to develop Information Society Technologies systems and series that offer easy access, affordable, user friendly, dependability and interoperability, to boost the European industry. The IST-Environment action will aim to improve environmental monitoring and decision support to promote sustainable development, to manage risk and emergency.
Mr. Nick Hodges made a brief introduction on the ENWAP activity and its objectives.
Mr. Nandor Zoltai introduced the approximation strategy of Hungary for the accession process to the European Union. Different tasks are involved for the Government in the approximation phases: legislation (different acts and rules have been worked out to assure that Hungarian laws conform to the EU Acquis legislation on environmental issues); and institutional framework structure (which is rather complete in the Hungarian government) assuring appropriate integration towards the EU laws through different sectors and working groups - including an environmental working group and subgroup in informatics.
The Executive Committee on Aid Co-ordination was established to make financial assistance provided by the EU funds (i.e. Phare) more efficient. The Accession preparation has been carried out at full speed under the lines of the Agenda 2000. Detailed work plans - adoption of the Acquis - with short and long term tasks (to strengthen the capacities of efficient implementation and enforcement of EU environmental law) will be submitted to the European Commission for approval at the end of March 1998.
The Environmental Information System of Hungary should be improved to help the implementation of the short and medium term National Programme. The purpose of the ENWAP activity on the transferability of end products from the telematics projects is very important and can be achieved if valid information systems on data transferability are provided. In Hungary there is a specific need for harmonising the definition of public environmental information with that provided by the EU countries. Once this gap is solved, projects like ENVIROCITY or TEMSIS could be easily adapted to some Hungarian sites. Also domains such as air and water related information systems are of major importance in Hungary.
Mr. Pal Bozo presented the Environment Information System of Hungary. The government needs up-dated and harmonised environmental data to formulate environmental policy, giving background for legislation, and to inform the public on environmental protection issues. Different Ministries and Institutions collect environmental data and a process of data standardisation and harmonisation is a must. The MERP (Ministry for Environment and Regional Policy) elaborates the governmental and regional policy for the environment, it prepares legal measures, controls and provides decision making issues for the Government. In addition, it addresses the citizen by providing information and awareness on environmental issues.
The new legal framework created and reinforced for the approximation and accession strategies dealing with acts such as the General Rules of Environmental protection, on Nature Conservation, on Regional Development & Regional Planning on Housing and Construction as well as the National Environmental Programme and the National Concept of Regional Policy has significantly pushed the revision of old databases and their integration. The MERP does not provide Environment Information only for the national issues but has supplied it to international co-operation activities.
For the OECD and EU organisations, MERP contributes a biannual data collection on the state of the environment and environmental expenditures of society, it takes part in the EIONET network as a National Focal Point, it contributed to the Dobris report and actively to the next EU'98 Report on the Status of Environment in CEE countries.
With NATO, MERP has been involved in scientific projects to set up training in the field of information technology and with UNEP, a UNEP/GRID-Budapest centre will deal with a meta-database building and international data services. The MERP supported the to overall scientific data collection for the International Geosphare - Biosphare Programme and Human Dimensions of Global Program (devoted to assess environmental global changes) and it took part in the MERA project for land cover monitoring by means of remote sensing. The ongoing main programmes at the MERP are: reorganisation of the data collection system; to develop the information system setting different Thematic Information Centres (TIC) in 3 Hungarian locations, and by opening a UNEP/GRID centre for the development of an environmental meta-database; the revision of the report on the state of environment in Hungary and to put this on Internet; and to be part of the European Environmental Information and Observation Network. An Intranet network provides direct access for the MERP at 5 different locations in Budapest including the Environment Management Institute as well as within 12 Environmental Inspectorates. At the public level, MERP information is accessible via www at the following addresses: http://www.ktm.hu, and http://www.gridbp.meh.hu.
Ms. Sara Safrankova presented the experiences of the Czech Republic in environmental approximation. The basic legal documents taken into account have been the White Paper, the Environmental Acquis, and the Agenda 2000. The Institutional framework at the international and national level shows a complete structure, assuring appropriate integration through different sectors and working groups.
The strategy of Environmental approximation foresees: 1. A phase of basic transposition (1995-1999) and; 2. A phase of adjustments (1999 till the date of full membership). In phase 1, the transposition of all the regulations listed in the Environmental Acquis should be adapted in the national legislation and a better level of compatibility should be reached between the amendment of the actual Czech environmental legislation and the regulations in the Environmental Acquis.
The achievements to date include a series of acts regulating the control of Emissions, Ambient Air Pollution, Waste, and the Import and Export of endangered wild fauna and flora and their protection. New acts are under preparation, focusing on Chemical Substances and Preparations, Prevention and Control of Industrial accidents, Genetically Modified Organisms, and Public Access to Environmental Information. Other acts will shortly harmonise the existing Czech law on general issues such as water, soil protection and environmental impact assessment. In addition the development of structures (institutions), procedures and rules will address the implementation of Environmental Management and Auditing Schemes and the Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control directives.
In the second phase, transposition of EU environmental regulations should be accomplished within national legislation, as well as any new EU directives which will be issued in the future (i.e. Water, Carbon tax directives). This means that new amendments in environmental legislation will be made on the basis of the transposition process.
The cost of environmental approximation can be evaluated through economic expenses including direct costs such as expenses paid by the Government to introduce, enforce and control the new legislation and also through indirect costs such as the expenses to be carried by regulated bodies to be in compliance with the new regulations. Some impact studies have been made by the Ministry of the Environment focusing on water protection, management of chemical substances and preparations, management of waste air and nature protection. Investments of 2.5% of the GDP annually are assumed to be to average cost on the environmental approximation issue from the Czech Government.
Mr. Bogdan Kobus presented a Polish example of some actual/possible telematics solutions in transitional environments. There are 49 districts in Poland which will be merged into 12 counties in 1999. In each district, an environmental inspectorate is present, checking on environmental violations. The inspectorate has an assessment division where data provided by the laboratories are elaborated. The key issue of implementing environmental commitments is to obtain harmonization of data between the different Inspectorates. For this purpose two common databases for air and water having an open architecture have been established. The database system is on line, providing information from the local Inspectorate to a central unit, which checks the violation of national environmental laws and the penalties that should be paid. A GIS facility in the system is under development as well as other types of databases.
During a national/international emission inventory, a common monitoring programme was established between 42 centers receiving a contribution of 2.2 MECU from EU (Black Triangle project). A common memorandum on data exchange was available for 4 countries (De, P, Cz, and Sk) which has shown some limits. Measured data (mostly emission data) were not all standardized and its quality assurance of such data needs to be included in this monitoring programme. If data are not properly calibrated and included in models, outputs from models can provide subjective results rather different from the actual situation, and the results may be further manipulated for other social/political purposes. Thus key points in such a programme are the data interchangability and a high quality assurance of the data.
Mr. Gary McGrogan presented air quality management options in urban areas for the EU. The preliminary results were provided by an EU funded project called European Air Quality Management. New air quality framework directives require action plans for cities. In general, national strategies minimize emissions while locally the emission can be extremely high. The short term actions are addressed by few Member States, and only for the threshold of SO2. Thus local plans are required. The short term action plans fail if local authorities, public and all the parties of the community are not directly involved in these procedures. Local authorities should design their action plan considering issues such as alternative road traffic vs. public transport, raising awareness between all the actors involved, understanding the reality and perception of the community and the business sector. For the actual public information systems, a wide range of methods can be used. These should consider the content of information to be provided to the broad public and which communication method to be applied.
Mr. Trond Bohler focused his presentation on the characteristics of the national air quality management system operated at NILU, for the Norway State Pollution Control Authorities since 1973. Such a system has evolved over time, continually answering to more advanced requirements such as monitoring, forecasting and warning of pollution situations in near real-time situations. Therefore from 1996, the AirQUIS system (developed by NILU) was started in the major urban areas of Norway. The combination of measurements, emission database and dispersion models integrated into a mapping system allows the local health authorities to inform the public about not only the concentration levels but also on of highly polluted areas.
Prof. Antonio Carmona Rodrigues presented the Portuguese National Water Resources Management Institute and strategy to monitor water quality. The monitoring network started in the early 80's and data was collected by several institutions and laboratories scattered across the whole of Portuguese territory. Several databases and networks were also generated, overlapping on the information provided, and data were not inter-calibrated. The current situation in the Portuguese water quality network is that the number of sampling stations is considered acceptable. The water quality guidelines set by European Directives apply mostly to main water supply abstractions and are not coincident with water level gauging stations in most cases. The Portuguese water quality network does not have baseline stations and water contained in reservoirs is not well studied. Only a few alert stations are presently used within its warning system, and the biological components of water are seldom measured.
Much of the river water flows in to Portugal from neighbouring countries: i.e. Spain, and water quality data from the Spanish side is poorly characterised. To improve the current situation, water quality monitoring network general guidelines have been drawn up with compliance with national, European and international legislation, defining water quality parameters for each sampling station (abstraction, flux, boundary, impact, PCTI and baseline) as well as the characterisation of pollution sources established. The number of measuring stations should be increased as well as the data exchange with Spain. The collected data is fed and integrated into a Water Resource Information System (known as SNIRH) capable of storing, processing and displaying water resources information, both internally within INAG, based on the SNIRH INTRANET, and to external entities. Following such guidelines, different objectives have been set out such as: the characterisation and evaluation of water quality, an improved water resources management; the better definition of water quality parameters and objective criteria for measurements; the better control of water quality from the source and checks as to where the most significant pollution sources are; integrated water quality modelling as a tool for planning and licensing, and the better control of water quality in international rivers.
The discussion of the morning session indicated that:
This type of exercise does not intend to identify one best single "practice" for air and water pollution management in EU and CEE countries. On the contrary, it will provide several successful solutions (good practices) related to specific local-regional-national conditions. The good practice exercise makes sense only if the actors concerned will question these practices, their weaknesses and inefficiencies. This is why the process should stimulate feedback and discussion.
The Good Practice exercise continued with the presentation of some case study in the air pollution domain. Mr. Nick Hodges presented the lesson learnt by the EMMA and EFFECT projects. The content of this presentation is summarised in the Working Document "Good Practice Case Studies in Air and Water Pollution Management" version 1, as well as the presentation of Mr. G. Ritter on the Good Practice on air quality management for the city of Munich.
Mr. Zbigniew Tomczak presented what the ECOSIM project aims to achieve with its Polish case study application site. The ECOSIM project will develop and demonstrate an integrated information decision support system for urban environmental planning and management in some EU cities (Berlin and Athens) and in 3 Polish municipalities; Gdansk, Sopot and Gdynia. Within the Polish application, a database system will be established that measures environmental data related to air quality, pollution of surface water and groundwater, soil pollution, noise levels and water balance.
The integrated information decision support system should provide the following information/tools to the Polish city planners and managers: the background of pollution in a given area, the pollution level under existing weather conditions or industrial disasters, the capability of transferring or providing information to other users harmful pollution data over a given area, the detection of industrial emissions of large quantities of harmful substances. Some constraints may be indicated when using such a sophisticated tool (the integrated information decision support system) in a new working environment, where individuals have not been trained to work with such a system: e.g. the attitude of the user, sceptical about the advantages resulting from the system, too little experience related to ecological models used in the system, the scarce equipment existing for the data acquisition and for running the system itself and the maintenance costs required to operate the system after the end of the project.
Mr. Kestutis Kvietkus presented the air pollution network and the urban air quality management strategy set up in some of the main cities of Lithuania. The main sources of air pollution in the Lithuanian cities are vehicles and less from industry. Due to the weather influence, the concentration of pollutants can also change and create extreme situations of toxic concentrations. Several manual and a few automatic air pollution monitoring stations are now available in the main areas of Vilnius and the automatic stations use the AIRVIRO System. The urban air quality management strategy focuses on the emission inventory, models, and information dissemination to the public. Two main networks should be available i.e. an urban one (connecting the 5 main cities) and a 'hot spots' network to monitor other toxic pollutants. The urban air quality management strategy should be included in the broader national monitoring programme as well as at international level (Baltic regions and EU).
The Good Practice exercise was continued further in the field of water pollution with the presentation of Prof. Joao Ribeiro da Costa on the lessons learnt by the SNIRH project and by Mr. G. Pinter on the Danube-AEWS project. The contents of these presentations are summarised in the Work Document "Good Practice Case Studies in Air and Water Pollution Management" version1.
The supply of air quality monitoring information is now insufficient, but is still the basis for raising the awareness. More action should be taken to have more involvement of the public in these action plans. The example of the public information system for the city of Helsinki has shown that a rather simple index, informing the public with real-time air quality data via radio, has been a rather effective tool for public awareness. This index is now in use in most of the cities in Finland.
Mr. Pavel Mladonicky, partner of the European Air Quality Management project presented a summary of the main actions taken for decreasing air pollutants in the city of Bansk‡ Bystrica, Slovakia. The main problems in Bansk‡ Bystrica are caused by a large concentration of air polluters, caused by industry and vehicles, the morphological position of the city located in a valley where strong inversions, still air conditions and frequent thick fogs occur. Some measures have already been taken to reduce air pollutants, setting out by converting heat suppliers from coal to natural gas and fining small polluters. Furthermore, new measures have been created or are in progress since the Local Environment Programme was approved on 21 November 1996, including: reorganizing city traffic within a new basic transport communication ring, tunnels and a trolleybus network (replacing current bus transport); the elimination of direct pollution sources by the reconstruction of heat suppliers to burning gas; the detection of all polluters and the creation of incentives to take effective measures for decreasing air pollution; the definition of higher fees for small polluters within the Central City Zone to the amount of 10 000 Sk.; offering of economic incentives to buildings that convert heating systems from fossil fuel to gas or electric energy in over a period of 5 years; the creation of "green air" corridors by the planting of high grown lime trees (Tilia cordata) alongside state roads.
Mr. Emilio Bugli Innocenti presented the E-MAIL (Environmental Management Architecture for Information Delivery) project. The project is developing a telematics application able to assist environmental monitoring and planning by using data provided by different sources, to standarize them and to integrate them in a multimedia platform. The project is now in its demonstration phase, verifying through its new users the transferability and acceptance of the system. The lessons learnt till now indicate that demos or mock-ups of the system are extremely useful at the beginning of the project i.e. user requirements phase, and an open interface is essential. Geo-interoperability of the system is a key issue allowing both vertical and horizontal integration of data. ISO Standards and other standards are a must. Needs of training is a prerequisite, the more people involved and interested in the system, the more train is required. In any IT project, new organization models should not be reinvented but re-engineered. The return on investment (ROI) of the project is to be seen in the increased productivity and in cost reduction: i.e. by having the right map at the right place when you need it (E-MAIL example). Commitment of the users should however, be high.
Mr. Ivelin Roussev, REC, presented the "Constraints to effective implementation and use of Telematics in CEE countries". There is an emerging market for environment telematics products and the role of telematics in the CEE countries is to support the approximation process mostly during the implementation and enforcement phase of the legislation. In addition, it has broader implications on economic development and modernisation. The major constraints to effective implementation and use of telematics in environment management are:
Ms. Michaela Arndorfer, ISEP presented the main issues and the preliminary agenda of the DETERMINE conference.
During the closing discussions the following points were made:
Agenda: (without seperated sections for air and water)