Administrative usage of simulation techniques for environmental protection

This paper presents an overview of some simulation techniques employed by local government administrations in Japan. As urbanization causes serious impacts on the natural environment, administrations are faced with environmental protection as a social issue. For any administration in looking for solutions to environmental problems which tries using computer simulation, a water supply-demand model and an air pollution model are both of major interest. Here, the models to be discussed were independently developed but we would like to emphasize a unified model-building concept covering the natural environment, water supply-demand and air pollution.