Web-based courseware was developed to complement a postgraduate course on E
nvironmental Management. The online material was designed to allow the stud
ents to approach the topic intuitively and interactively in a self-paced mo
de. Graduate students, including biologists, chemists, physicists and engin
eers should be able to get a good understanding of the technical issues inv
olved. In order to intuitively understand the effects of the emission and m
eteorological conditions with respect to the plume rise, a simple simulatio
n program has been developed that includes two different modeling approache
s to estimate the plume rise: the Briggs methods [1] for stable and neutral
/unstable conditions, and Zhang & Ghoniem [2] model for stable conditions.
The courseware was used for 20 students. Students' feedback about the use o
f this tool was obtained and evaluated by means of questionnaires. The tool
will be applied in future courses. A more extended version of the program
is being developed and adapted as a professional tool for air pollution reg
ulatory purposes.