A GIS-Based Early Warning and Emergency Decision Support System for River Heavy Metal Pollution Incidents

Abstract

Recently, aquatic pollution of heavy metals has been breaking out with increasing frequency around the world, which puts great threats to ecosystem and human health. However, there are seldom researches on Early Warning/Emergency Response System (EWERS) of heavy metal pollution. In this present study, we propose a logistic structure and function structure of EWERS on the ground of functional requirement of response to river heavy metal pollution. This system includes five subsystems: heavy metal monitoring, contaminant source information management, emergency management, database and authority management subsystems. It can not only predict the process of heavy metal accumulation processes, but also calculate risk degree for given area taking the water function zone into consideration. For those areas where risk is identified as unacceptable, emergency response plan should be created by case base reasoning to achieve reduction hazard in a cost-effective way.