Multimedia Assessment of Pollutant Pathways in the Environment, European scale model : (MAPPE-EUROPE)

The report documents the structure, functions and algorithms used for the modeling of pollutant pathways in air, soil sediments and surface and sea water at the European continental scale. The algorithms are implemented in an extension for ESRI ArcGIS 9.2 a popular geographic information system (GIS) software widely used within the European Commission and in the research, environmental assessment, planning communities. The software is called MAPPE after Multimedia Assessment of Pollutant Pathways in Environment of Europe; the acronym is also the Italian word to denote maps. The purpose of the software is to provide a user-friendly way to convey the wealth of geographic data available to model the fluxes and concentrations of chemical pollutants emitted by industrial activities and other point emissions, and widespread use within households, urban environments or agriculture. The intended use is for organic contaminants such as pesticides, pharmaceuticals, VOCs, and other industrial chemicals. The output of the model, i.e. maps of concentration and chemical fluxes, can be used for the screening of hot spots at continental scale, the assessment of risk for human health and ecosystems, the evaluation of policies and scenarios with reference to the "big picture" of the continental scale. However this does not avoid the need to use more detailed, site specific assessment procedures for single problems, but provides a tool for decision support in contexts such as the management of priority substances of concern for soil, water and air quality, the control of effects of environmental pollution on human health and ecosystems, and the sustainable management of agro-chemicals, etc. by making available a geographic representation available of the consequences of emissions to air, soil and water compartments.