Development and use of integrated air quality management tools in urban areas with the aid of environmental telematics

Contemporary urban air quality management requires the use of appropriate s ystems which include air quality models, a Geographical Information System (GIS) and a combination of expert systems and decision support tools, while at the same time possessing the capability to receive information from in situ measurements. Until recently, the relation between Information Technol ogy capabilities and the system's design and architecture were poorly addre ssed, mainly due to technological limitations posed. Moreover, air quality management scenario design issues were partially considered, because of the difficulty in aggregating complex, air quality related issues, in a compre hensive and effective manner, from the end users point of view. In the pres ent paper the use of Environmental Telematics is discussed as a framework f or the development of urban air quality management systems, while a compreh ensive approach for the application and evaluation of relevant scenarios is presented.