Background

The idea for starting the project "Geographic Information System (GIS) for city planning and monitoring of the environment" was born in April 1994. Under the guidance of Greek consultants, a project which wins a competition at the European Council and starts under the name URBAN in 1997 is developed. The firms Epsilon-Greece, ESRI Inc.- Germany, Geosystems-Rumania, MT-MT-Bulgaria, the municipalities of Varna, Bourgas and Galats, Technical University Varna take part in the project s development. For realization of the project the participating municipalities have to make their own versions on GIS in a field chosen by themselves. The municipality of Galats develops an application in the sphere of city planning, the municipality of Varna in the sphere of the cadaster and the municipality of Bourgas works in the sphere of environmental monitoring. For the realization of the project, the municipality of Bourgas receives 44 000 Ecu, and participates with as much in own contributions. The activities on the project end in the end of 1998.

Practice

The efforts of the experts from the municipality of Bourgas are directed towards environmental problems and the possibilities to analyze and manage them with the help of GIS. The municipal department "Environmental Protection and Natural Resources Usage" (EPNRU) defines the requirements to the ecological application of GIS, to the structure of the database and to its content. The department provides the available data on the environmental parameters included in the system: air, noise, water. It also provides the admissible values of their components, established with regulatory documents and received from the Hygiene Epidemiology Institute, from the Regional Department of the Ministry of Environment and Waters and from other laboratories in the city. URBAN-DATA, an independent program product, is created by the Information Systems department in order to input data from the environment. This product makes it possible not only to input preliminary data independently of the existence of a GIS, but also to create an archive database and use it for different queries. Once GIS is created the already input data in inserted into tables in ArcView and is joined with the objects from the graphical database.

In order to demonstrate the possible influence of the environment on the population, information on the number of the residents is collected. Digital maps M 1:500 and 1:1000 are used to provide graphic data and the so-created files are additionally processed. They become the basis for the themes in ArcView. They are selected in such a way that they also be the basis for other applications. Data for area of about 1500 hectors is processed.

The GIS application for the environment could be divided into several sections. Section Quality of the Air includes data on:
- Polluters: chimneys and their characteristics;
- Wind;
- Results from the monitoring stations.
Section Noise includes data about:
- Class of the street;
- Volume of the traffic;
- Level of the noise.

Versions of views, given the total concentration of polluters, are developed for:
- different wind directions;
- dangerous and set-up wind speed;
- measured emissions for Maximum levels of Concentration (MLC).

The data coming from the monitoring stations is for the period 94- 98 and is divided by year.

The application of GIS for environment is to be used in the daily activities of the EPNRU department and for informing the population about the ecological conditions in the town. The successfully created application not only provides conditions for its further development and refinement but also for widening the range of GIS usage in the municipality of Bourgas.

Difficulties in the implementation:
The technological difficulties experienced during the realization of this project are mainly related to the collecting and the processing of the data, as well as to the creation of mechanisms for their updating.

Results

The advertising materials produced at the project s completion are:
an electronic map of Bourgas;
an URBAN-DATA program product for input of data on the environmental polluters;
a program for viewing and analyzing this data on the basis of GIS;
an Internet page with information about the environmental conditions in the city, aiming to inform the citizens; updated every week; http://www.bourgas.net/municipality/urb_bg.htm);
a CD for presentation of the project and two presentation files;
advertising materials;
a book which includes a description of the municipality of Bourgas applications, the methodology used to create the environmental GIS applications of the Technical University Varna, articles about some basic problems of the management of information systems, a conceptual model for a system for regional planning, all based on the experience of the municipality of Bourgas;

The application of the municipality of Bourgas is awarded with an annual prize for 1998 for special achievements in the sphere of GIS.