Development of a geography-referenced regional exposure assessment tool for European rivers - great-er contribution to great-er #1

The objective of the GREAT-ER project is to develop and validate a powerful and accurate aquatic chemical exposure prediction tool for use within the EU environmental risk assessment schemes. Current techniques to estimate regional predicted environmental concentrations (PECs) use a generic multimedia ‘unit world’ approach and do not account for spatial and temporal variability in landscape characteristics, river flows and/or chemical emissions. Hence, the results are merely applicable on a generic screening level since these models do not offer a realistic prediction of actual steady-state background concentrations. A software system will be developed to calculate the distribution of predicted environmental concentrations (PECs) of down-the-drain chemicals in European surface waters on both a river and catchment area level. Data on dissolved oxygen, biological oxygen demand and ammonia will also be used to assess water quality and to provide data for calibration and verification. The system will use a Geographic Information System (GIS) for data storage and visualization, combined with simple mathematical models for the prediction of chemical fate. Hydrological databases and models will be used to determine river flows. This refined exposure assessment tool should significantly enhance the accuracy of current local and regional exposure estimation methods. The new exposure assessment methodology will integrate specific environmental information and be worked out in a geographically-referenced framework, ultimately on a pan-European scale. The initial data collection, collation and model application will be applied to two pilot study areas, representative of different hydrological and climatological situations in Europe. A blueprint of the methodology will be developed and applied to these pilot study areas, which will allow refining, optimization and verification of the system.The ultimate objective is to implement GREAT-ER for the entire European Union.This work will be performed in the second phase of the project, after the initial three years which are limited to the development of the methodology and verification in the pilot study areas.