Decision support tool for accidental pollution management

Abstract

Accidental river pollution can cause damage to the environment, put at risk the health of people that use the water for domestic purposes, and, not lastly, compromise dependent economic activities (e.g., agriculture). The reduction of the concentration of pollutant on any river following an accidental pollution can be achieved using dilution, by opening for certain duration the bottom gates of the reservoirs placed on the river's tributaries and releasing a significant volume of clean water in the main river. The hydraulic simulation and the pollutant transport are executed, firstly considering there is no dilution and secondly for the dilution scenario (bottom gates of the reservoirs open). A database was created, containing the results of simulations of pollutant transport for various values of the pollution characteristics in both diluted/undiluted scenarios. The database served for the implementation of a web decision support tool that presents an intuitive and easy to use GUI that allows the user to input details of the accidental pollution. Straightforward actions to be taken are presented to the end-user (e.g., "Open the bottom gates of the reservoir X at time T1 and close it at time T2") and synchronized charts show the effect of the dilution in respect to the concentration of pollutant at certain locations on the river. Using the described approach, a reduction of pollutant concentration in the river with up to 90% can be obtained.