Use of Selmagis for Preparation of Air Quality Action Plans

Municipal environmental protection officers have to survey local and regional air quality. Supplementary to air quality monitoring, modelling systems are gaining more and more an importance. Lohmeyer GmbH & Co. KG provides the graphical user interface SELMAGIS, able to accommodate the locally used air quality models. It is completely implemented into ESRI’s geographical information system ArcGIS. Thus the user is able to use his specific air quality models and at the same time all functionalities of the GIS (e.g. intersection of data, interfaces to data bases etc.). SELMA is a modular system, presently containing different dispersion models as AUSTAL2000, PROKAS, MEMO/MUSE, NERI’s OML-Highway being presently implemented. Depending on the individual task, i.e. regional, urban or micro scale modelling, the user is able to choose the adequate dispersion model on a common data base and a common display of the results. SELMA is used in different European countries. The presentation will show the application and advantages of the SELMA procedure for the preparation of the air quality action plan for the German coastal city of Rostock. The determination of the concentrations resulting from the main emission sources industry/harbour, maritimetraffic and road traffic was executed on a meso-scale and an urban scale. The German regulatory model AUSTAL2000, the Gaussian dispersion model PROKAS and its street canyon module have been used, providing the results to be used by the standard tools of ArcGIS. By calculating the contribution of each emission source it was possible to identify the main polluters and to get a first hint on the hotspots in the city of Rostock. At these hotspots the concentrations were calculated in more detail with the prognostic microscale flow and dispersion model WinMISKAM, which also has an interface to GIS formats. Using this analysis for the air quality in Rostock it was possible to trade off actions for reducing PM10 or NO2 concentrations and to prepare the air quality action plan for Rostock..