REC * PROGRAMS * TELEMATICS * ENWAP
Mr. Hodges and Mr. Boch, co-chaipersons of the ENWAP group, welcomed the participants and the new members of the ENWAP-EG from CEE countries (Mr. Ruzic, Mr. Stoijc. and Mrs. Kazmukova). The chairpersons introduced briefly the revised agenda (given in Annex 2).
Mrs. Azzali briefly presented the User Requirements document.
Mrs. Kazmukova presented the air quality project, ATEM, applied in the city of Prague. It consists of an inventory information system supported by a visualisation tool. The city is divided into grids and an inventory and evaluation of all sources of pollution (NOx ,SO2, dust particles and Ozone) by class has been made. The results are in the form of maps, where, for example, point, line and diffuse maps of SO2 are given for the city of Prague in a specific year. Through such an inventory, it is possible to analyse the trend of certain pollutants and to foresee the future air quality situation in the city. It gives also valuable information for decisionmaking i.e., in the Master Plan of the city- for the type of alternative energy/fuel to be used in the city, in traffic management as to which traffic infrastructures should be built in the city. Examples include the conversion to gas as a means of reduction of SO2 emission (below given limits). NOx emission has increased by 90% from Õ91 Ñ Ô98 due to the rapid increase of vehicles in the city; alternative strategies such as building tunnels and traffic control are foreseen. Environmental data in Prague is collected from the IMIP institute, which has published data on trends and statistics including life expectancy, all within a major publication. Mrs. Kazmukova will provide a written note on the strategy for EU accession.
Mr. Stojic presented a review of the pre/accession procedure for Slovenia since 1991. The European Council meeting in Luxembourg on 12 and 13 December 1997 determined the future layout of the Union and of Europe as a whole, by launching the accession process in the year 1998. During the accession period, Slovenia is devoted addressing the environmental Directives cited in the comission's White Paper and is undertaking additional and complementary measures to address the other critical areas of EU environmental legislation in accordance with the national environmental priorities identified in the draft National Environmental Action Programme (NEAP) and in other national strategic environmental documents.
The long term programme of the accession activities has followed three phases: inception, strategic planning, and implementation. The first two phases have already occurred while the third is currently underway.
Mr. Stojic continued his presentation with the project ÒEnvironmental Vulnerability Study Ò, which supports the Slovenian Physical Plan. The study is the basis for the assessment of physical development planning variants from environmental aspects. The national Physical Plan serves to define the fundamental, strategic solutions related to the development. According to the provisions of the Environmental Protection Action, Articles 451 and 52 state that any strategic decision must be based on an Environmental Vulnerability Study. The decisions at this level need an objective status targeting specific locations with most of the material on which to take decisions presented verbally and/or graphically in the form of diagrams - systems or maps with rough areas of activities on a smaller scale.
The method of evaluating spatial solutions from environmental aspects is also in line with the general character of defining physical development activities and their locations at the national level, as well as with the concrete character of defining activities and locations at the project level. Highly vulnerable or less vulnerable areas for particular activities have thus been defined at the national level, through which it is possible to find suitable areas for the location of such activities. The vulnerability ratio of the area also serves as the basis for the assessment of development solution variants. The procedures of vulnerability assessment are not yet defined, and have not been practised to date.
Mr. Ruzic, Chairman of the Information Management Working Group (IMWG) within the Monitoring, Laboratory and Information Management Expert Group (MLIM) of the Environmental Programme for Danube River Basin (EPDRB), made a presentation of the EPDRB Programme. In the Danube basin, national water quality related monitoring programmes produced results which could not be compared with each other. In some CEECs, local monitoring programmes organised for larger tributaries have not yet been harmonised, and data processing has not been unified. Quality assurance is rather poor or non existent. The study aims at a harmonisation of the water/environmental management for the whole basin.
Within the EPDRB Programme three different expert groups were established:
The main objective of the Monitoring WG was to organise a Transnational Monitoring Network (TNMN) according to special criteria and to coordinate the work of national focal points for the Danube River Basin. The Laboratory Management WG coordinated the improvement of laboratory practices, increasing interlaboratory comparison of water quality measurements, the use of reliable standardised analytical methods, and coordinated the work of national Reference Laboratories. The Information Management WG coordinated the collection of water quality data from individual countries using so called Data Exchange File Format (DEFF) and the work of national information managers within National Information Centers. A special application was prepared in PARADOX by WTV consortium for the management of TNMN data which can be transferred later to any other RDBMS system.
Croatia nominated the Center for Marine & Environmental Research of the Rudjer Boskovic Institute in Zagreb as the National Reference Laboratory and for later coordination of Information Management in Croatia.
During 1998 the project of harmonising national monitoring within Croatia was initiated, based on experiences gained in the EPDRB programme. A similar activity is proposed for bilateral Croatian-Hungarian monitoring of the Drava and Danube rivers (not yet implemented). Study of remote control & networking has been initiated and the establishment of remote management of environmental information has been proposed based on ISDN communication and videoconferencing tools (incorporated in to UNDP/GEF implementation plan for Danube Information System).
National (Croatian) TNMN data for the Danube River Basin and statistical tools are available at static WWW pages: http://faust.irb.hr/~pecar/cimz.html
Mr. Tomczak, of ECOSIM presented the projects related good practices. The ECOSIM project has developed and demonstrated an integrated information decision support system for urban environmental planning and management for Gdansk. In the Polish application of the ECOSIM project, a database system is built up, storing measured environmental data related to air quality, pollution of surface water and groundwater, soil pollution, noise levels and water balance. Direct users of the system are provincial councils, city planners, managers and research institutes. A uniform method of prognosis is applied. The integrated information decision support system has provided the following information/tools to the Polish city planners and managers: background pollution in a given area, the pollution levels under existing weather conditions, the capability of transferring or providing information to other users data on harmful pollution over a given area.
Three scenarios have been worked out: two for air quality (for levels of SO2 ) in different wind directions and one detecting the level of ground water pollution. Some constraints on the simulation models used here are that the city is not centric and that there is depressed terrain in the surrounding area. Some simulations were also not possible - river run-off or run-in of the Baltic Sea. The data transfer by Internet for the model simulation performed in Berlin is problematic. Transfer of data is very slow and should be performed with other media faster than Internet. Methodology and application transfer to other Polish towns is feasible. Polish institutions need to participate more actively in the setting up of the modelling procedures in order to exchange more efficiently know-how on the model and to include special modules characteristic of the Polish site.
Mr. Kellagher of H. R. Wallingford presented the Integrated waste water and the Urban Pollution Management projects supported by the EU INNOVATION Programme. Telematics in urban drainage is just now being introduced. Areas of telematics application in urban drainage are: real time control of sewers and sewage treatments, data collection flow and pollutants, and recording of pollution events.
European cities and water authorities are currently investing massive resources in the battle against contamination of receiving waters caused by pollution from urban wastewater systems. The prevailing political attitude of Europe, as expressed through existing and probable future legislation, calls for the acceleration of this process, aiming at higher environmental standards. A pragmatic approach to managing urban water pollution is required, one which focuses attention on the response of the receiving waters exposed to pollution loads. The recipient-oriented approach, together with new, integrated analysis and operational tools can bring a new quality to pollution management practice and contribute to the economic, yet improved performance of their wastewater systems.
Sewer modelling is now well developed but it needs flow data and correct alignment. Implementation is slowed down by infrastructure layers/responsibility. The currently required data on contributing areas, network infrastructure and flow rate must be accurate. Most of the data are now mapped, as well as the house hold networks and their occupancy. Verification of the model is done on flow and depth, which provide also data on surcharge and overflows. The model is verified against real events and point accuracy. Urban pollution management (UPM) looks at the river aspect and consequent pollution levels. Flow rates are performed by dye in river transportation. Sampling for quality is critical Ñ with the timing and volume data collected. Frequency, intensity and duration of the flow are critical parameters to be measured, they depend almost on the accuracy of the probe, which must often be cleaned. The main telematics opportunities for sewer operation are the real time control and the reliability/availability of sensors. The first may be applied during flood mitigation, prediction and warning, during the pollution monitoring, storage, flow and sediment control.
Data reliability, the cost of data collection and the decision needed with incomplete knowledge are the main problems with the data collection approach in the projects. To overcome some of these problems, an automatic measuring station called Aquascan has been developed and tested during these projects.
Mrs. Mollet presented briefly the CAPE (Coordinated Action for Pan-European Transport and Environmental Telematics Implementation support) project results. The project aim is to disseminate the result of RTD of telematics-based applications to environment and transport urban and regional authorities in the EU and CEE countries. Recently, the results of a survey were gathered on the priorities environment policies in these countries and need for telematics applications. Within the survey, returns of 26% on 556 samples throughout the local authorities in the 10 accession CEE countries were received. The highest priorities of future environmental policy were domestic waste (40%) and illegal waste dumping, followed by traffic emissions. The short term impact of telematics, were seen to be on decisionmaking, education & training and public awareness. The priorities areas for the use of information technologies, were: waste management and monitoring of ground water as well as air quality.
CAPE will organise several user fora and one of them, dealing with Environment telematics, will take place next May in Munich (Germany). The definitive agenda will be available at the end of January. The next forum, involving both transport and environment telematics issues, will take place probably next September in Prague.
CAPE cooperation with ENWAP foresees these experts participating in the Steering Committee for the organisation of the user fora, and that the Good Practice case studies developed by ENWAP will enrich those GP case studies developed by CAPE, through a cross-fertilisation of ideas and GP studies between the two projects.
The ENWAP expert group and forum will participate actively at the different CAPE meetings, will include holding a session/or sessions on i.e. Good practice studies and User requirements in environment telematics. The rapporteur of the ENWAP-EG as its focal point will relate, the different actions between CAPE and the ENWAP experts.
Mr. Simpson representing the CAPE project, presented the results of a CEE based qualitative survey on environmental problems, and priorities and the need for solution solutions through telematics-like measurements. The results show that the responsibility of environmental protection is almost a matter of local governments. The major area addressed by local level policy priorities this are waste and sewage water management, water resource control and remediation of contaminated sites. Application of telematics tools to monitor the environment are mostly applied at national and regional level, and seldom at local level. At the local level, environmental data dissemination is increasely common via the Internet, but is most frequently paper based. The lack of training, obsolete equipment, lack of institutional cooperation, poor data standards and low priorities for environment investments are the major obstacles for telematics uptake at local authorities in the CEE countries.
Mrs. Azzali presented the status of revision of the Good Practice document. A new version (3.1) of the GP working document was presented and discussed. The document is articulated in different chapters where the first includes an overview of the TAP Programme and the ENWAP user forum, the introduction of the good practice exercise and the role of telematics in the approximation process for the CEEC environments in transition (examples of approaches in H, CZ, SL, CR and constraints in applying telematics tools for CEEC). The second chapter refers to the description of selected telematics projects (14 projects, of which 8 are TAP-EN projects) in air quality and water resource management. The description refers to context and objectives, technical instruments, results and impacts, which could be gathered for each project in a schematic form and added to an annex. The description for each project continues with the obstacles encountered, the transferability and the lessons learned. These parts should be further developed and elaborated. The third chapter deals with recommendation and conclusions.
Mrs. Azzali proposed an outline for the latter chapter, in which the ingredients of successful Good Practice case-studies should be emphasised as well as the lessons learned from cases of positive social, economic and ecological changes through the use of telematics for air and water management systems. Some basic evaluation criteria of alternative "success pathways" for moving between present and future environments should be pointed out, such as the following:
Which criteria of evaluation are being applied?
Economic criteria
Social criteria
Political criteria
The list below of actions and associated deadlines were established and agreed.
| Actions | Who | When |
|---|---|---|
| Copies of the already available contributions on conclusions and recommendations for the GP exercise | Azzali | 14 December, 1998 |
| Propose the main items for project synthesis, conclusions and recommendations of the GP document | Azzali | 18 December, 1998 |
| Provide feedback and contributions to action 2 to Azzali | All experts | Beginning of February, 1999 |
| To elaborate version 4.0 of the GP working document including the expert contribution | Azzali | End of February, 1999 |
| Feedback from the experts + Commission on the version 4.0 All experts + Commission | All experts + Commission | 10 days after releasing version 4.0 of the document |
| 7th ENWAP Meeting : proposed items of the agenda and date confirmation (12 March 1999) | All experts + Commission | Begin February, 1999 |
11.00 Coffee-break
11.10 Good Practice, ECOSIM project,
Dr Zbigniew Tomczak, Technical University of Gdansk, Poland
11.30 Good Practice in the Urban Pollution Management & Integrated urban wastewater projects, Innovation Programme
Richard Kellagher, HR Wallingford Group
12.00 Discussion
12.30 ------------------ LUNCH ------------------
13.45 The Good Practice document: status of revision,
Mrs. Susanna Azzali, ANIMATE, Brussels
14.15 Good Practice in Air Quality and Water Management:
Group Discussion (Each ENWAP member will be asked to draw his own conclusions and recommendations for the whole exercise in +/- 15 minutes)
16.15 Conclusions and agreement on actions
16.45 Planning of next ENWAP-EG meeting
17.00 Close