System of Analysis and Production Decision-making on the Basis of Ecomonitor Hardware and Software System of Environmental Monitoring

Team Head Dmitrii Drozdin Associate Professor of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Programming drozinda[at]susu[dot]ru

Project aims at developing the Ecomonitor system that would allow to monitor the spread of pollutants on the premises of industrial enterprises in a real time and simulate scenarios of the spread of pollutants according to weather forecasts.

Problems:

Today the problem of clean air is especially relevant. There is a separate paragraph in the Ecology National Project devoted to the task of implementation of a road map for reducing pollutant emissions into the air in large industrial centres. The revision of old federal laws and the emergence of new ones ("On Protection of Environment", "On Setting Quotas on Emission", and "On Environmental Information") aims at improving the real environmental situation and ensuring the emission reduction at the facilities of industrial enterprises. It should be noted that all this happens under close attention of the populace.

The problem of manufacturing enterprises is to fit quickly and efficiently into the new environmental trend, which involves the minimization of pollutant concentration on the premises of enterprises and/or within the limits of the city, without reducing the economic effect of production.

The proposed Ecomonitor system is a tool designed to solve this problem. The system allows for a real-time monitoring of the exceeding in the pollutant concentrations, which makes it possible to immediately respond to this problem, optimizing the volume of emissions of priority pollutants.

The spread of pollutants in the air directly depends on the state of the atmosphere (wind strength and direction, solar radiation, etc.). The Ecomonitor system allows to simulate various scenarios of the future spread of pollutants based on the weather forecast and to develop the appropriate necessary measures to reduce the pollutant concentration.

Opportunities:

At present, the project partners are the Federal Supervisory Natural Resources Management Service (Rosprirodnadzor) of the Chelyabinsk Region and OOO Emerson, a sensors manufacturing company.

The project team is cross-disciplinary and includes highly qualified specialists: ecologists, mathematicians, chemists, programmers, and economists with engineering background.

The project team has access to the university's Supercomputer Centre and computer laboratories equipped with all the software necessary for the project. Such software, for example, include MS Visual Studio2017, Matlab2017, etc.

In addition, in accordance with the agreement on cooperation between South Ural State University and the Office of the Federal Supervisory Natural Resources Management Service in the Chelyabinsk Region, the project team is able to conduct field research on the distribution of pollutant concentration.

Product

Ecomonitor Hardware and Software System

Product Consumers

The main consumers of the product are Russian manufacturing enterprises. At present, the potential customer is Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works. It is assumed that the Ecomonitor system should first of all be implemented at manufacturing enterprises of the Chelyabinsk Region. This complies with paragraph 1 of the Clean Air federal project, where Chelyabinsk and Magnitogorsk are mentioned among the applicable cities. Then the system can be scaled to other industrial enterprises in our country.

Project Basis

Within the frameworks of the Ecology strategic field (South Ural State University, the city of Chelyabinsk), the Ecomonitor hardware and software system has been developed.

The following functions are included in the system:

Real-time visualization of the spread of pollutant concentrations

• Information on different emissions (for example, chimney emissions) is collected and transmitted to the Ecomonitor system. According to the received data, the dispersion of pollutant concentrations across (enterprise and/or urban) premises is calculated. As a result, it becomes possible to track the ecological state of the air atmosphere in the area of interest;
• It should be noted that the Ecomonitor system is based on the principle of setting quotas on emissions, what corresponds to the current trend of environmental regulation.

Simulation of various scenarios of the spread of pollutants depending on weather forecasts and planned emissions

• This function allows enterprises to plan various emission control measures based on weather forecasts.

Vidio: https://www.loom.com/share/d1b068f3942f45fe9b500c7cf2463345

Presentation: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1F1IMytnRqJfLBaukIIfng3kDHi3q3eBA

Example of functioning:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/11mdaLHV5SGu5m8U0LWWehV3SQzY-9Pn2/view

Project Costs

Project Period (July 1, 2019 - January 1, 2021)

1. July 1, 2019 - January 1, 2020: Ecomonitor system debugging;
2. January 1, 2020 - January 1, 2021: Promotion on the market.

Project Key Milestones

1. July 1, 2019 - October 1, 2019: Development of a mathematical model of pollution;
2. Ecomonitor system testing.

Project Target Indicators

Key Project Partners

Number of agreements signed with key industry partners (protocols of intent)

1. Cooperation agreement with the Federal Supervisory Natural Resources Management Service of the Chelyabinsk Region (Rosprirodnadzor)

Coordination of the science project with the events of national projects and state programs

Ecology National Project

The project level assessment at the moment of the research in terms of indicators: "Research", "Innovation", "Production", and "Market"

10-point scale (0 – minimum, 10 – maximum)

Indicators:

Research – 9;

Innovation – 10;

Production – 7;

Market – 3.