AirQUIS: Historical background

The development of an integrated environmental information system started at NILU in 1992. The first major demonstration of an operational system was presented during the Winter Olympic Games in Lillehammer 1994.

ENSIS was developed as a management and decision support system for environmental issues. ENSIS has been developed by Norwegian Research Institutes and included AirQUIS, which was an air pollution related module and WaterQUIS for water quality topics. The system also included a module for cost estimated of materiel damages "CorrCOST".

The system was developed as a management tool for planners, as an information tool for the public and as an expert system for specialists.

The ENSIS group consisted of the following institutions:

• Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU)
• Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA)
• NORGIT senteret A.S. (NORGIT)
• InterConsult (ICG)

The ENSIS system contained in addition to AirQUIS and WaterQUIS common modules that are shared by air and water specific parts of the program system. Important common parts are the measurement database, and the graphical user interface including the GIS (geographical information system).

From 1999 NILU wanted to upgrade and further develop the AirQUIS system into a more modulated and user-friendly system. This system is now being presented to the international marked.

The AirQUIS surveillance and planning system.

The user interface is to a large extent a map interface from which spatial distribution of pollution sources, monitoring stations, measurements, model results and other geographically linked objects can be presented. The map interface can also be used as an entrance for making queries to the database.