Air, Water and Soil Quality Modelling for Risk and Impact Assessment (2007)

Environmental pollution by harmful anthropogenic substances and uncontrolled use of natural reserves have become a global problem and require substantial efforts for developing and applying efficient measures of control, mitigation and abatement. For achieving this goal predictions of possibly resulting risks and impacts are urgently needed for future environmental planning. The majority of environmental quality models is focusing on selected isolated parts of the geo-system though impacts on one compartment usually also affect one or more other parts. There is a strong need to advance to an integral treatment of air, soil and water pollution by combining different models for different media. Furthermore it is imperative to develop and apply modern methods of control theory to environmental risk assessment in order to support mitigation and abatement measures in an optimal way. The aim of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on "Air, Water and Soil Quality Modelling for Risk and Impact Assessment" was to further joint environmental compartment modelling and applications of control theory to environmental management. The articles of the proceedings provide an overview of ongoing research in this field regarding assessment of environmental risks and impacts. Besides selected issues of practical application they address questions of forward and inverse modelling, integrated treatment of environmental changes and economic impacts as well as aspects of future development of numerical environmental modelling.