Environmental Modelling in Urban Areas with GIS

More accurate spatio-temporal predictions of urban environment are needed as a basis forassessing exposures as a part of environmental studies, and to inform urban protection policy andmanagement. This paper is focused on modelling in the GIS to estimate air, water and soil pollution in urbanareas. The basic environmental components are complemented by bio-monitoring, waste management andnoise exposure. The models, which use data from long-time monitoring, are developed using correlation,regression and factor analysis; simulation of dynamic relation and spatio-temporal phenomena. Integration ofa wide range of relatively independent factors enables more complex analysis of environment in urban areas.GIS, which can integrate a wide range of spatial and temporal data, is used for data management, input andoutput of data, visualization and development of programming modules that extend GIS with other statisticalanalysis and dynamic modelling. The analysis and models were built in ArcGIS with ArcObjects. In spite ofthe fact that the models are calibrated and tested by application in the urban areas of Prague, the structure ofthe GIS project is applicable on other similar areas. The fundamental part of the environmental models isfocused on modelling of surface-water quality, soil pollution and their relation to human activities and airpollution. The models use data measured during decades, which are collected from manually and automaticpollution monitoring networks. The map layers are divided into a few classes that represent basic maps ofurban areas in the scale 1:500, thematic maps, aerial photographs, monitoring networks, and outputs ofenvironmental models. The spatio-temporal analysis and dynamic environmental models are accessiblethrough the user interface of the GIS project.