Anastasios Bassoukos

development of a hierarchical system for the teletransmission of environmental and energy data

Abstract Environmental and energy management in contemporary urban environments and at a household level, requires for the design of systems that will be able to integrate remote and spatially distributed monitoring data, while being open, modular, flexible and low cost. In addition, technological and industrial deregulation result in shifting from services that are heavily dependent on existing information infrastructure to services that depend on the satisfaction of instant information needs at a customer level. This paper presents methods suitable for the design and development of a hierarchical system for communicating and archiving environmental and energy data, towards serving applications that require easy and instant access to these data. The aim is to provide services at a household level for consumers ready to adopt the features of e-services to their home.

Environmental data extraction from multimedia resources

Extraction and analysis of environmental information is very important, since it strongly affects everyday life. Nowadays there are already many free services providing environmental information in several formats including multimedia (e.g. map images). Although such presentation formats might be very informative for humans, they complicate the automatic extraction and processing of the underlying data. A characteristic example is the air quality and pollen forecasts, which are usually encoded in image maps, while the initial (numerical) pollutant concentrations remain unavailable. This work proposes a framework for the semi-automatic extraction of such information based on a template configuration tool, on Optical Character Recognition (OCR) techniques and on methodologies for data reconstruction from images. The system is tested with a different air quality and pollen forecast heatmaps demonstrating promising results.

A New Environmental Image Processing Method for Chemical Weather Forecasts in Europe

It is common practice to present environmental information of spatial nature (like atmospheric quality patterns) in the form of pre-processed images. The current paper deals with the harmonization, comparison and reuse of Chemical Weather (CW) forecasts in the form of pre-processed images of varying quality and informational content, without having access to the original data. In order to compare, combine and reuse such environmental data, an innovative method for the inverse reconstruction of environmental data from images, was developed. The method is based on a new, neural adaptive data interpolation algorithm, and is tested on CW images coming from various European providers. Results indicate a very good performance that renders this method as appropriate to be used in various image-processing problems that require data reconstruction, retrieval and reuse.

The air quality Model Documentation System of the European Environment Agency

With the aim of providing objective, reliable and comparable information on air pollution models, the European Topic Centre on Air Quality (ETC/AQ) has developed a concept for an air quality Model Documentation System (MDS) to be accessible on the internet. The aim of the system is to include adequate information on the individual models, their application areas, and their status with respect to evaluation and validation. Thus, a user may obtain guidance in the selection of the most appropriate model for their application. A pilot version of the MDS had been installed on the world wide web in 1997, while an updated operational version was launched in the spring of 1998. The present paper summarises the main features of the upgraded version of the MDS. Apart from fulfilling its main functional goal, i.e. to provide information on air quality models, the MDS structure also fulfils the main design goals, which are to create a lightweight, easily portable application that works through the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) and requires minimal changes in the configuration of the http server and the system files.

Extraction of Environmental Data from On-Line Environmental Information Sources

Analysis of environmental information is considered of utmost importance for humans, since environmental conditions are strongly related to health issues and to a variety of everyday activities. Despite the fact that there are already many free on-line services providing environmental information, there are several cases, in which the presentation format complicates the extraction and processing of such data. A very characteristic example is the air quality forecasts, which are usually encoded in image maps of heterogeneous formats, while the initial (numerical) pollutant concentrations, calculated and predicted by a relevant model, remain unavailable. This work addresses the task of semi-automatic extraction of such information based on a template configuration tool, on methodologies for data reconstruction from images, as well as on Optical Character Recognition (OCR) techniques. The framework is tested with a number of air quality forecast heatmaps demonstrating satisfactory results.

Environmental Information Systems and the Concept of Environmental Informatics

Environmental Information Systems are the core of contemporary urban environment management systems, and a prerequisite for the proper, timely information of the public. Technological advances require systems that can make optimum use of informatics and telecommunications infrastructures to address environmental management needs, yet which are open, flexible, modular and inexpensive to implement and operate. For this reason, the use of Open Source software resources is presented as an appealing solution. On this basis, a number of existing environmental information components for wireless and Web-based applications are presented. Overall, the right of access to information related to the quality of the environment citizens live in via personalized electronic information services, appears to suit well the concept of open source, and may lead to a better quality of life and more effective citizen involvement and participation in environmental decision-making.

An Air Pollution Model Database On TheWorld Wide Web

A Model Documentation System (MDS) on atmospheric dispersion models has been created by the European Topic Centre on Air Quality containing information on various models and their properties. According to the query needs, the MDS allows users to search for specific models by using (i) the model name when this is available, (ii) predefined keywords for a structured search and (iii) text contained in the model descriptions for an unstructured search. Apart from fulfilling the main functional goal, which is to provide information on air quality models, the MDS structure fulfils also the main design goals, which are to create a lightweight, easily portable application, that works through the Common Gateway Interface and requires minimal changes in the configuration of the http server and the system files. The MDS is accessible through the World Wide Web, thus using a widely spread clientserver technology.