Geographia Technica, No. 1/2009, pp. 21 - 30

ON-LINE AIR QUALITY MONITORING AND WARNING SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR BUCHAREST URBAN AREA

 V. Craciunescu, Mihaela Caian, C. Flueraru, Argentina Nertan

ABSTRACT - Air quality is a major issue for all the important cities in the world. Bucharest is no exception. The air pollution in Bucharest, due to traffic and industry, is abundant, especially in areas the human population is concentrated. The fast rate of economic growth is bringing more sources of air pollution. In this context, the AIRAWARE project, funded in the EU LIFE framework, is aiming to build a pilot air quality monitoring and forecasting system to ensure a sustainable development of the rapidly expansive urban areas in Bucharest, minimizing and preventing the air pollution impact on human health. The AIRAWARE system has a distributed architecture with dedicated sub-systems for: (1) air quality monitoring; (2) numerical modeling and forecast; (3) geospatial portal for data integration, visualization, query and analysis; (4) slow-flow and rapid-flow feedback. The G.I.S sub-system, described in detail in this paper, is build entirely with standard compliant free and open source software applications like GDAL, Geoserver, PostgreSQL + Post G.I.S, OpenLayers, TileCache. The AIRAWARE system users list include the main local and national authorities in the domain of air quality monitoring, forecasting, air pollution abatement and mitigation of impacts, such as: the National Meteorological Administration, the Regional Environmental Protection Agency of Bucharest, the Direction for Public Health of Bucharest, the Centre for Urban Planning of Bucharest, the Institute of Biology of the Romanian Academy and Meteo-France as strategic European partner.

Keywords: air quality, AIRAWARE, open source, GIS, Bucharest

Full article:craciunescu_on-line_air_quality_monitoring.pdf