The Directive 2008/105/EC (on environmental quality standards) of the European Parliament and the Commission ask all Member States an inventory of emissions of priority substances for all river basin districts (EP, 2008). This task requires appropriate data and approaches for the description of the current state of surface water bodies and the evaluation of appropriate measures for the reduction of emissions into the surface water bodies to achieve a good ecological state of surface water bodies and to meet the quality standards set.
Based on these requirements the proven MONERIS concept that was developed for modeling of nutrient emissions into the water bodies (Behrendt et al., 2000), was adapted for the pollutant emissions and implemented in an open source environment as MoRE system (Modeling of Regionalized Emissions).
The MoRE system comprises approaches for the emission pathways: municipal wastewater treatment plants, industrial direct dischargers and emissions of historic mining for pathways related to point sources and the following emission pathways related to diffuse sources: sewer systems, surface runoff, erosion, groundwater, tile drainage, direct atmospheric deposition onto water surfaces and inland navigation. In addition to the modeling of emissions into the water bodies an estimation of the river load is carried out to verify the model results. The above mentioned modeling approaches and sources of input data are described in detail in Fuchs et al. (2010).
The MoRE system is based on an open source PostgreSQL database and two different graphical user interfaces (GUI): the MoRE Developer GUI and the MoRE Visualizer GUI (Figure below). The GUIs have been developed for user interaction with the PostgreSQL database. The PostgreSQL database content can be easily read, changed and extended via the MoRE Developer GUI. Also, modeling can be launched via a calculation engine which is incorporated in the Developer GUI with a dynamic linkage to the PostgreSQL database. Modeling results can be visualized via a GIS-browser (MoRE Visualizer). Users can access the MoRE system either via internet on a multi-user basis or via a single user application for PC.
System architecture of the open source tool MoRE
References:
Behrendt, H., Huber, P., Kornmilch, M, Ley, M., Opitz, D., Schmoll, O., Scholz, G. & Uebe,R. (2000): Nutrient Emissions into River Basins. UBA-Texte, 23/00
EP (European Parliament and the Council of the European Union) (2008): Directive 2008/105/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 December 2008 on environmental quality standards in the field of water policy
Fuchs, S., Scherer, U., Wander, R., Behrendt, H., Venohr, M., Opitz, D., Hillenbrand, Th., Marscheider-Weidemann, F., Götz, Th. (2010): Calculation of Emissions into Rivers in Germany using the MONERIS Model. Nutrients, heavy metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. UBA-Texte 46/2010, Dessau