REMSSBOT
Regional Environmental Management Support System
Based on Telematics

Keywords:Catalogue of Data Sources, data harmonization, metadata navigation, water resources, industrial risks
Application site: Attica region, Gr; Piemonte region, I; Scheldt region, NL & B
Internet: http://www.netor.gr/remssbot or http://www.hellasnet.gr/remssbot
E-mail: ing@csi.it

Context
Many local and regional environmental management boards had to face a rapid change of information management from a single topic and zone to an integral management including information on larger or even cross border areas. Almost all the public administrations have some form of IT systems supporting their activities but often the systems are incompatible, as well as the information concerned. The obvious way to overcome these obstacles would be to design and implement a new IT system which creates such compatibility in all the local sites.

Objectives
REMSSBOT, aims at demonstrating environmental information services, at regional level, taking benefit of an innovative design. In the project participate government Administrations of the regions Piemonte (IT),Attica (GR) and Scheldt (NL).

a) Attica, Greece
Air pollution is measured by several stations belonging to the Ministry of the Environment or municipalities. A system integrating both the available data and presenting them in a simple way would be very helpful for the decision makers in the region. Water pollution monitoring is needed to check the bathing water quality in the region's coasts, especially during summer. Information registration and storage of solid waste is not available. All local authorities use only one sanitary landfill, where more than 200 vehicles deposit over 4.000 tons of solid waste per day. For a better operation and organisation of the local authorities in the region, information about solid waste produced per local authority should be obtained.

b) Piedmont, Italy
In Piedmont, the industrial and economic development has been characterised, much more than in other regions, by a high level of urbanisation in particular towns and areas around them. Most important environmental problems and causes of pollution for the ecosystem come from human activities and the level of industrial development. The experience of industrial accidents, which occurred in the neighbourhood of urban areas, and the presence of risky plants located near cities urges a transparent and appropriate management of technical and administrative procedure concerning industrial plants with a relevant risk of accident. It is important to share information on risky industrial processes among different public bodies involved in the controlling procedure and to disseminate information to the public.

c) Scheldt, France, Belgium,The Netherlands
The river Scheldt is of great importance for a wide variety of uses such as fishing, agriculture, shipping, industry, drinking water purposes and recreation. In the last decades however development of economic interests conflicts more and more with the ecological functioning of the system. In the Scheldt basin, water managers and policy makers, acting in the frame of the International Commission on the Protection of the river Scheldt (ICBS/CIPE), are informed about the situation in the whole catchment area of river Scheldt. There are five administrations responsible for integrated water management, namely France, Wallonia, Brussels, Flanders and The Netherlands. To realise an integrated and transboundary water management approach, an objective overview of different kinds of data should be provided.

Results
REMSSBOT has demonstrated new types of environmental information services, at regional level, taking benefit of an innovative design. The proposed telematic solution, based on a catalogue conforming to the guidelines of the Catalogue of Data Sources (CDS) of the European Environment Agency, describes which information is available at what location and provides IT systems with the automated procedures to access the actual information. The supporting tools and building blocks allow users to navigate through the catalogue and explore information sources regardless of environmental topic and location. The results are three software demonstrators available at the Attica, Piedmont and Scheldt sites, where they prove their usefulness by guiding users towards the data sources themselves and by accomplishing specific tasks such as the exploitation of underlying data structures located in different sites.

Technical characteristics
The REMSSBOT CDS data model has developed a catalogue containing the metainformation (based on the guidelines of the EEA ETC/CDS), a description of how to access that information (an extension to the EEA ETC/CDS) and a tool to access to actual information.

A CDS is a database containing information about available data sources, e.g. contents, providers, ways to access the actual information. The user of the system can find out, through the CDS, what information is available in the network at what location, together with the possible ways to access that information.

This is the concept upon which the EEA ETC/CDS is built consisting of the provision of meta-information (information about information) on environmental subjects.

The REMSSBOT model defines three types of services, the R(EMSSBOT)-Services necessary for factual data retrieval:

The R-Product is a REMSSBOT solution towards document access. The R-Process is an extension to the EEA ETC/CDS model.

The REMSSBOT model also defines an underlying layer of services, the E(lementary)-Services, which rely on Object Oriented Technology and, in particular, on CORBA (Common Object Request Brokering Architecture). E-Services are designed to accomplish elementary tasks, such as data retrieval and filtering. More complex tasks are implemented at the R-Service level by executing a series of E-Services. R-Services consist essentially of a list of the executed E-Services.

Main elements of the REMSSBOT System Architecture are the Object Oriented and Web Technologies and CORBA.

The CDS and R-Process functions can be accessed through the REMSSBOT-client program installed on a PC or a Workstation and a web browser. The REMSSBOT-server application can access meta information from the CDS database and execute R-Processes which access data from different Regional Data Providers (through the E-Services). The data provider's databases and the CDS database are accessed through CORBA.

In Attica the demonstrator is a client -server application developed in Object Oriented Technology (VisualWave/Visual Works & DST – CORBA communication protocol) and implemented in Ethernet network within the Ministry of the Environment. Some specific technical characteristics are given:

Piedmont
The final application is available on the regional Intranet Network. Some specific technical characteristics are given:

Scheldt
Implementation is at the Rijkswaterstaat Directorate Zeeland, Flemish Environmental Agency and RIKZ offices. Some specific technical characteristics are given:

Transferability
The REMSSBOT concept can be transferred and applied in any case where there is a need for access to information from different and remote databases. Potential user groups are administrations and institutions in Europe dealing with environmental information management. Many organisations (i.e. the National Biodiversity Network in the U.K.) have already expressed their interest to implement the REMSSBOT solution and the EEA/CDS organisation have the intention to apply it to data management and information sharing within the NFP (National Focal Point) Network.

In Italy, the REMSSBOT approach has been applied to GAIA, an inter regional project started in 1996, where an Environment Information Network is established between six regions. In the Netherlands different organizations have expressed their interests to apply the system. LWI has developed a Decision Support System, applied to the Scheldt estuary using REMSSBOT for Integrated Data access. The North Sea monitoring organization (SEANET) is willing to use the REMSSBOT system for integrated data access on sediment flow, nutrients, sea currents, algiblooms, etc.

 
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